SELECTED PAPERS 



appears to be a chasm between the science of life and modern engi- 

 neering sciences that precludes any possibility of co-ordination. Never- 

 theless, it is my firm conviction that a closer consideration will reveal 

 the situation to be otherwise, and that, side by side with the other 

 fields of study, microbiology may lay claim to a profound interest on 

 the part of all those who are concerned about the education of the 

 prospective chemical engineer. Hence my aim to-day will be to make 

 you partisans of this view, and for this purpose I shall discuss the role 

 that microbes play in human economy. 



Human society depends nowadays, among many other things, on a 

 large number of organic substances for its multifarious needs. A gigan- 

 tic organic-chemical industry, this term to be understood in its broadest 

 sense, performs the requisite conversions of organic compounds. First 

 of all I want to examine the question whether in the present day and 

 age microbes may still fulfil a function in this industrial transfor- 

 mation process. 



Obviously, there is every reason for posing this question. For, despite 

 the fact that in the beginning of the previous century the synthesis of 

 the manifold organic substances was considered to be the exclusive 

 prerogative of living organisms, there has gradually developed a strong 

 reaction against this notion. 



A professor of organic chemistry is not likely to pass up the opport- 

 unity to refer in his inaugural address to the discovery that was made 

 on February 22, 1828, and to do so with consummate satisfaction. 

 And rightly so; for on that memorable day the barriers which until 

 then had sharply divided the products of animate from those of inan- 

 imate matter were shattered in consequence of the accomplishment 

 of the celebrated chemist, Friedrich Wohler, who had succeeded in 

 converting ammonium cyanate into urea. An endless field for study, 

 inaccessible till that moment, was thereby opened up for the chemist. 

 And I need not belabour the point that chemistry and chemical 

 industry have nobly acquitted themselves in this respect, and scored 

 prodigious successes. The number of organic substances that the chem- 

 ist has learned to prepare in his laboratory runs into the hundreds of 

 thousands, and the application of these discoveries has caused sweep- 

 ing changes in the world's enterprises. 



166 



