188 ANNUAL REPORT SAUTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



deed, the proportion of pioneers and prophets on the faculties of 

 colleges and universities has not been higher than that found in other 

 portions of the population, and recognition of the significance of 

 radically new and fruitful ideas has all too often been quite accidental. 

 To support this statement, I quote from Sir James Walker's Memorial 

 Lecture on J. H. van't Hoff : 



In order to obtain his doctor's degree, van't HofE rematriculated in the Uni- 

 versity of Utrecht in October 1874, and was prompted to his doctorate in Decem- 

 ber of the same year. His dissertation was entitled, "A Contribution to Our 

 Knowledge of Cyanacetic Acid and Malonic Acid," It was of a routine character, 

 and contained nothing beyond the powers of an ordinary advanced laboratory 

 student. This is at first sight surprising, for van't Hoff had in the preceding 

 September issued as a pamphlet his famous paper on space-formulae. The 

 original pamphlet was in Dutch, and bore the title, "An attempt to extend to space 

 the present structural chemical formulae, with an observation on the relation 

 between optical activity and the chemical constitution of organic compounds." 

 It argues well for the sound common sense of the young van't Hoff that he 

 presented a humdrum piece of practical work for his dissertation rather than the 

 startling innovation contained in his pamphlet, for the latter might have had an 

 even worse fate than the equally famous thesis of Arrhenius, containing the first 

 statement of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. 



However, once a field of knowledge has been opened up and its impli- 

 cations for society made evident, the universities have not been slow in 

 admitting it to their territories, cultivating it, and teaching it sys- 

 tematically to their students. In the seventeenth and the early part 

 of the eighteenth century scientific research was really a pioneering 

 activity maintained by a few individuals who wandered far beyond 

 the frontiers of then current knowledge. As these pioneers progressed, 

 the results of their work became important additions to the store of 

 existing knowledge. Professors of natural philosophy and, much 

 later, professors of chemistry and of biology were accepted into the 

 academic world. In teaching such subjects as physics, chemistry, or 

 biology to students, the professors encountered many problems that 

 could be answered only by recourse to theoretical or experimental 

 research. Thus to do a thorough job of advanced teaching, a professor 

 became a research man and devoted a considerable portion of his time 

 to the discovery of new Imowledge as well as to imparting the old. 

 Like their predecessors, the amateurs, the professors acquired a pas- 

 sionate interest in searching for new facts about their subjects and in 

 ordering these facts into satisfying patterns that could be communi- 

 cated to their collaborators and to their students. Slowly but surely 

 research became recognized as one of the fundamental and, later, one 

 of the characteristic features of universities. During this era, which 

 extended from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the latter 

 half of the nineteenth, students of the sciences were not numerous 



