PRKSIDKNTIAL AD])RI':SS — SIXTION 1!. 4(; 



in which the chvision of the science has proceeded. It may be 

 added that appHed departments, which take their title from the 

 " .fjroup course '' they teach, freciuently a]>point their own chemists 

 separate from the department of chemistry i)roper. Thus the 

 Medical Faculty in the Univeristy of Edinburgh has just 

 apnointed a professor of " Medical Chemistry," whose duty it 

 will presumably be to arrano^e a compact course specially 

 arrans^ed for medical requirements. The University of Glasgow- 

 has just created a chair of " Physiological Chemistry," in which 

 a section of chemistry will be taught as a|)])lied to general Biology 

 — for students of medicine, i)ure science, and chemical technolog>-. 



Faculties of Agriculture also have their own professors of 

 " Agricultural Chemistry,'' and in big American centres sub- 

 sections, such as " soil chemistry,'' " dairy chemistry," and so 

 forth, are handled by specialist lecturers. 



This reference to specialisation in chemistry, in directions 

 other than sub-sections of the pure science, brings us to the 

 second aspect of the process of fission. 



It will be quite obvious by this time that there is no sucli 

 thing as the " Compleat Chemist." The chemist has all Nature 

 for his province, and all Natiu^e is too big a morsel for mortal 

 man to chew. Fission is inherent in the nature of the science 

 and cannot be avoided, and when it gets down to bed-rock it 

 is the specialised man nowadays who does the really scientific 

 v.'ork. 



Knowing this, it might be imagined that the science must 

 of necessity drift to a specialisation so intense that its own 

 broad problems sufifer neglect ; that the individual worker could 

 never remain broad enough to visualise the main oiitlines of 

 the practical application of his own subject ; that he would not 

 see the wood for the trees. This idea, however, is altogether 

 erroneous, althovigh it may perhaps have something to do with 

 the pre-war British idea that the scientific specialist should be 

 subordinate to the man of " ])road " training, guaranteed to 

 absorb the wood as a whole, and resolutely refuse to believe in 

 the existence of the trees ; guaranteed to fulfil the Fuclidean con- 

 ception of a plane — length and breadth without depth. It has 

 taken a world-war to make the politico-legal mind realise that 

 the very process of specialisation gives a fresh kind of breadth; 

 a capacity for focussing details to a specific end. The English 

 organic chemists, monomaniacs moaning over the constitution 

 of the benzene ring, cried in the wilderness for 40 years before 

 their country woke u]) to the fact that vital industries turned 

 upon the question as to whether Kekule, Claus, Ladenburg, or 

 Armstrong, had been right in their conjectures concerning the 

 configuration of the aromatic nucleus. In the hour of tribula- 

 tion many men, " finding out " as Moulton described Pope, 

 " how in the extremely (juiet and domestic circle of crystals 

 the various molecules sat round the table," were called in to 

 remedy the neglect of half a century. That, it may be added 



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