MOLECULAE STRUCTUEE AND LIFE.^ 



By Aui. PicTET, 

 Professor of Vlicinistry at the Univcrsiiij of Geneva. 



Of all the problems of nature the one deserving the most intense 

 interest is undoubtedly that of life. Its solution concerns at the 

 same time the whole range of natural and physical sciences, and it 

 deserves to become the objective of all the exhaustive methods of 

 research now at their disposal. And yet among the sciences bio- 

 chemistry is the principal one upon which falls the task of this re- 

 search. In fact, it is not at all doubtful that, if not life itself, at 

 least the phenomena that it manifests in living things may be en- 

 tirely of chemical origin. 



But biochemistry itself is based on pure organic chemistry. In 

 fact the fundamental condition for intelligently interj^reting a 

 phenomenon is to have exact knowledge of the agency by which it 

 is unfolded. Now, it is the function of organic chemistry to supply 

 us in this particular case with this knowledge by establishing the 

 nature of the materials of which living things are composed. 



To separate, to purify, to characterize, to analyze the innumer- 

 able compounds derived from animals and plants have been the pri- 

 mary objects of organic chemistry. But it has not stopped there; 

 it has pushed on further to learn what may be called the constitution 

 of these bodies ; that is to say, the actual architecture of their mole- 

 cules, the exact place that each of their atoms occupies, and the rela- 

 tions that those atoms bear to one another. It has succeeded in the 

 great majority of cases, thereby accomplishing an immense task that 

 may rightly be regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements 

 of human intelligence up to the present time. 



I hasten to add that the enormous amount of labor that these 

 researches have required has not had its source alone in that specu- 

 lative interest connected with all new knowledge. Chemists who 



^Address at the opening meeting of the ninety-seventh session of the Soci^t^ helv^tique 

 des Sciences naturelles, held at Geneva, September 12 to 15, 1915. Translated, by per- 

 mission, from Revue Scientifique, Paris, November 13—20, 19] 5, and from author's revised 

 pamphlet : " Extrait des Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles, Geneva, 1915." 



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