PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



I DECLARE open the Symposium on Haematin Enzymes of the International 

 Union of Biochemistry and welcome all who attend it. 



It is a great pleasure for me to welcome the many distinguished scientists 

 from overseas who have come to Austraha to discuss with us the problems 

 which interest us all. I hope that the stimulation which you may receive will 

 repay you for your long and strenuous journeys to our distant shores, that 

 you may carry back happy memories of this week spent in Australia — and 

 that you wiU return! Your visit will certainly be a stimulus to Australian 

 science. 



I am particularly happy to receive you in this home of the Australian 

 Academy of Science.* When we discussed plans for its erection in the 

 Council of the Academy only a few years ago, I little dreamt that I should 

 have the honour of opening the first International Conference in it. 



Our thanks are due to the International Union of Biochemistry, not only 

 for accepting our invitation to hold the Symposium, but also for financial 

 support; to the AustraUan Commonwealth Government; to the Wellcome 

 Trust ; and to the various Academies and national bodies, particularly to the 

 National Science Foundation of the United States and to the Royal Society. 

 The support of these various organizations made this meeting possible. 



We decided that we wanted an intimate symposium in which all participants 

 could be rehed upon to make valuable contributions. We wanted to discuss 

 our problems critically, but with some degree of leisure. This is a Symposium 

 and even if we cannot do as the Greeks did, having a meal, wine and dancers in 

 this hall, the comfortable lounge chairs are the nearest approach to it possible 

 in these hurried times. There you may recline for a little snooze if the richness 

 of the intellectual feast endangers your mental digestion. 



Our Symposium has a pecuhar note in that it calls together scientists of 

 different branches, from quantum mechanics to microbiology, and asks them 

 to direct the spotlights of their knowledge on to a comparatively narrow field, 

 but a field of great biological importance and chemical interest. After reading 

 the prepublished papers I am convinced that we were right in assuming that 

 the difficulties of finding sufficient common ground for our various denomin- 

 ations are no longer insuperable. Still, we shall have to exert some patience 

 and forbearance. 



I ask the theorist not to be impatient with the experimenter, if he asks 

 questions which reveal his lack of knowledge of theory, but to answer them in 



* See frontispiece {Editors). 



