528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



Organizations and institutions of many kinds are engaged in pure 

 scientific research, and they should receive every encouragement, but 

 the natural home of pure science and of pure scientific research is to 

 be found in the university, from which it can not pass. It is a high 

 function of the universities to make advances in science, to test new 

 scientific discoveries, and to place their stamp of truth upon those 

 which are found to be pure. In this way only can they determine 

 what shall be taught as scientific truth to those wiio, relying upon 

 their authority, come to them for knowledge and believe what they 

 teach. 



Instead of abdicating in their favor, may not our universities, 

 stimulated by the wonderful achievements of these industrial labora- 

 tories, find a way to advance the conduct of their own pure scientific 

 research, the grand responsibility for which rests upon them ? This 

 responsibility should now be felt more heavily than ever by our 

 American universities, not only because the tragedy of the great war 

 has caused the destruction of European institutions of learning, but 

 because even a worse thing has happened. So great have been the 

 fatalities of the war that the universities of the Old World hardly 

 dare to count their dead. 



But what can the American universities do, for they, like the pure 

 scientists, are not engaged in a lucrative occupation? Universities 

 are not money-making institutions, and what can be done without 

 money ? 



There is much that can be done without money. The most im- 

 portant and most fundamental factor in scientific research is the 

 mind of a man suitably endowed by nature. Unless the scientific in- 

 vestigator has the proper genius for his work, no amount of financial 

 assistance, no apparatus or laboratories, however complete, and no 

 foreign travel and study, however extensive, will enable such a mind 

 to discover new truths or to inspire others to do so. Judgment and 

 appreciation and insight into character on the part of the responsible 

 university authorities must be applied to the problem, so that when 

 the man with the required mental attributes does appear he may be 

 appreciated as early in his career as possible. This is a very difficult 

 thing to do indeed. Anyone can recognize such a man after his 

 great achievements have become known to all the world, but I some- 

 times think that one who can select early a man who has within him 

 the making of the scientific discoverer must have been himself fired 

 with a little of the divine spark. Such surely was the case with Sir 

 Humphrey Davy, himself a great discoverer, who, realizing the fun- 

 damental importance of the man in scientific discovery, once said 

 that Michael Faraday, whose genius he was prompt to recognize, 

 constituted his greatest discovery. 



