SELECTED PAPERS 



its product may be a scientist, there is no certainty that this scientist 

 will belong to those who really extend the frontier of science. This 

 leads to the question, 'What are the characteristics of the truly success- 

 ful scientist?' 



In this connexion, it is tempting to ask your attention for the views 

 of an indisputable scientific genius, the first winner of the Nobel prize 

 for chemistry, the Dutch chemist J. H. van 't Hoff. Three quarters of 

 a century ago, on being nominated to the chair of chemistry at the 

 University of Amsterdam, Van 't Hoff delivered a remarkable inau- 

 gural address which bore the title of 'Imagination in Science'. Herein 

 he gave a convincing documentation for his thesis that scientific pro- 

 gress has mainly been due to a strong power of imagination which acts 

 as the driving force in the discoverer. He then concluded that this im- 

 agination would as a rule not be restricted to the scientific field but 

 would also manifest itself in artistic talents, love of literature, poetry, 

 romance, etc. He gave a preliminary analysis of the biographies of 200 

 famous scientists and showed that his hypothesis held true for a high 

 percentage of these men. Of the numerous examples put forward by 

 Van 't Hoff I shall cite only the following: One might expect that 

 James Watt, the inventor of such a practical contraption as the steam 

 engine, would have been a very level-headed man. However, it is re- 

 ported that, even as a boy, he gave convincing proof of an exception- 

 ally imaginative mind. Once his parents boarded him out for some 

 weeks in a friendly family. When his mother came to fetch him, his 

 hostess said that she was glad to get rid of him. The trouble appeared 

 to be that every night when bedtime was nearing, Watt started to tell 

 pathetic or burlesque stories, one after the other. These tales were so 

 enthralling that he kept the family awake for long hours with the final 

 result that the next day everybody was dead tired. 



Van 't Hoff summarized his views on the way in which science pro- 

 gresses in the following quotation from Buckle: 'There is a spiritual, a 

 poetic, and, for aught we know, a spontaneous and uncaused element 

 in the human mind, which ever and anon, suddenly and without 

 warning, gives us a glimpse and a forecast of the future and urges us 

 to seize truth as it were by anticipation.' 



In a recent paper by Professor Bernard Cohen of Harvard Univer- 

 sity, I found the same conviction of the importance of imagination for 

 scientific progress. I need only cite his statement: 'After all, to those 



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