SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION — GIBSON 189 



and most of them went on to careers in medicine or pharmacy. A 

 few advanced students went into professional careers, and the most 

 brilliant became teachers and research leaders in schools or universi- 

 ties; very few found careers in industry, and privately endowed 

 research institutions were extremely rare. 



The coming of this century saw the beginning of another major 

 change ; the impact of scientific research on the useful arts had begun. 

 Scientists, particularly chemists and chemical engineers, entered in- 

 dustry, and the demand for more such men placed on the universities as 

 well as the technical schools another obligation, that of training men 

 who could take part in industry not merely as adjuncts to product 

 and process control, but as creators of new processes and products. 

 New vistas for intellectual leadership were opened up and the uni- 

 versities responded to the new challenges. Members of the faculties 

 of science and engineering found that they needed to establish direct 

 contact with the rapidly changing problems of industry in order to 

 provide realistic courses of study for an increasing number of students 

 destined for careers in industry. Closer relations between university 

 scientists and the industries developed, schools of chemical engineering 

 and other applied sciences were established, and, as consultants, many 

 professors of chemistry, physics, and other sciences not only realized 

 the power of their disciplines to solve problems that had baffled the 

 empirical technologists, but also brought to their students experience 

 and fertile lines of research which prepared them admirably for lead- 

 ership in their chosen fields. This relationship between the universi- 

 ties and industry was established in Germany 25 years before it became 

 effective in this country. A conservative course, charted according to 

 their traditional objectives, brought about gradual but deep-seated 

 changes in the universities. It should be noted that in these changes 

 the better universities did not attempt to compete with technical 

 schools in producing technicians. Industry called for and received 

 well-trained scientists to solve its problems and spearhead new 

 advances in its growing laboratories. 



During this same period the increasing appreciation of scientific 

 research by the general public was marked by the endowment and 

 establishment of private research institutions and by the rapid growth 

 of large government laboratories devoted to research and development 

 in fields such as agriculture, mining, and scientific standards that 

 were vital to the country's economic growth. To summarize, the half 

 century from 1890 to 1940 saw an increasing dependence of the indus- 

 trial and economic life of the country on the application of science. 

 This was recognized to be a fundamental and stable trend, and the 

 universities reflected this realization in changing their curricula to 

 provide men educated for leadership in the new order. 



