56 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION B. 



year course, while a degree course in the Biochemistry of Fer- 

 mentation is provided for students who intend to devote them- 

 selves to the upper reaches of their subject. It may be added 

 that the whole progress of brewing, from the time of Pasteur 

 onwards, has been a chemist's progress. 



In regard to the industrial ramifications of chemistry, space 

 forbids further mention. Suffice it that there is no industry into 

 which the chemist has not penetrated, and many industries depend 

 lor their whole existence upon some basic chemical discovery 

 or continued chemical control. Thus the development of the 

 \vhole mining industry of the Witwatersrand, and the very 

 coming into existence of the city of Johannesburg, was con- 

 ditioned by a laboratory observation made originally by a pure 

 chemist, and developed by a mineralogical chemist — who, it may 

 be added, did not get enough out of his patent to enable him 

 to abandon his practice. The cyanide process for the extraction 

 of gold from low-grade ores and tailings makes just that 

 difference between profitable and unprofitable production of gold 

 in South Africa, and without it the industries of the Witwaters- 

 rand would never have reached their present development. 



In the application of his science to the industries the 

 chemist has three lines of activity. He may be asked to control 

 the technical aspects of the industry entirely, owing to the fact 

 that they are so dominantlv chemical as to make " fool-proof " 

 methods impossible of application. Or he may be asked to 

 step in and subject an existing empirical process to scientific 

 study, and devise methods whereby it may be improved. Or he 

 may be asked to discover a totally new method of carrying out 

 some desired operation, the need for which is obvious, and upon 

 v/hich an industry is to be built up. Of this last fine we may 

 take as examples the probletn of the commercial utilisation of 

 atmospheric nitrogen, and of the preparation of synthetic rubber. 

 The atmospheric nitrogen problem was still in the hands of the 

 theorists 18 years ago. At the present day it has been solved 

 in several different ways, and millions of pounds worth of 

 nitrate and ammonium compounds are produced per annum. 

 Had it not been for the processes discovered shortly before the 

 v/ar Germany would have been beaten before 191 5 was out, since 

 she was completely cut off from the natural sources of nitrogen 

 previously used for explosives. In this connection the words 

 of Lord Moulton at the last annual dinner of the Chemical 

 Society in London, are of interest : — 



" Few people, I think, realised the extent to which this war 

 was based on chemists and chemical progress. There is not 

 the slightest doubt that the dogs of war were held in leash until 

 the completion of those great installations which produced 

 ammonia by the ITaber process. Germany was wise enough to 

 realise that she must not be cut off from her nitrates unless she 

 could produce at home anmionia in the vast quantities required 



