180 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



directed toward a common end, that is, toward the elucidation 

 of associated problems related to one subject. Thus the staff 

 of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, 

 which includes physicists, geologists, crystallographers, min- 

 eralogists, and chemists, works on the structure of the rocks 

 and their manner of formation. Although the field of the 

 actual investigations ranges from high-temperature photom- 

 etry to the study of complex solubility diagrams and their 

 interpretation on thermodynamical principles, the results of 

 all the work carried out are converged on the problem of the 

 structure and formation of the earth's crust. The Nela Park 

 Laboratory of the General Electric Company, in the same 

 way, is studying the production, distribution, and measure- 

 ment of illumination; and all its work, which may involve 

 psychology, physiology, physics, and chemistry, is related to 

 that one subject. 



A laboratory of the convergent type, which carries on work 

 in one field of science for a considerable time, may conveni- 

 ently be described as a research institute. Research institutes 

 have come into existence in the last half century without our 

 realizing that they represent an innovation in the organiza- 

 tion of research, but they will probably be the most important 

 agencies for the production of scientific knowledge in the 

 future. In many cases they have been formed by outstanding 

 investigators at universities. A professor specializes in some 

 field of work and directs the studies of his graduate students 

 into that field. Then others who are interested are attracted 

 to join him until his laboratory is recognized as the natural 

 center for researches on that subject. 



Many examples of this process could be given, from which 

 I can take, almost at random, only a few as illustrations. The 

 invention of the cyclotron has made the radiation laboratory 

 at the University of California the central point of the world 

 for research in nuclear physics. At Cambridge University 

 in England, the Cavendish Laboratory has been an institute 

 of physical research under two successive directors, J. J. 

 Thomson, who determined the nature of the electron, and 



