40 president's address— section b. 



chemists in the past to go straight into works or into an analytical 

 laboratory on the completion of their routine course, without 

 waiting to acquire any experience in research work at all. It is 

 perhaps not unccnnected with the high standard of training re- 

 quired that chemists in America are now commanding higher 

 salaries than engineers of equivalent status. 



In contrast with the foregoing, the Australian Chemical In- 

 stitute, which has been founded to improve the status of chemists 

 in Australia, has now definitely decided to accept as a sufficient 

 qualification for admission to its membership, a pass in chemistry 

 only at the second year examination of the pass B.Sc. course, no 

 knowledge oi subsidiary subjects being specified beyond the stan- 

 dard prescribed for the School Leaving Certificate. . True, the 

 further stipulation is made that the candidate must have had at 

 least two years' experience m a chemical laDoratory, but there 

 is nothing in the present Regulations to imply that such experi- 

 ence may not be concurrent with his class work. Beyond remind- 

 ing you that during the first and second year of a University B.Sc. 

 course the student's time has to be shared between chemistry 

 and other subjects, that he may do no, or very little, organic 

 chemistry, and that in any case he does not as a rule begin to get 

 an all-round grip of his major subject until his third year, com- 

 ment in this address on the policy adopted by the A.C.I. would 

 be out of place. For the present, therefore, I must leavei the facts 

 to speak for themselves. 



It is to be hoped that the Australian Institute of Science and 

 Industry, for which, as for so many advances m Australian 

 Science, we are indebted largely to the initiative and energy of 

 Professor Orme Masson, may fulfil the purpose for which it was 

 originally }>lanned ; for in that case it would open up wide fields 

 of employment for Australian scientists in general and chemists in 

 particular. Just now, however, there seems to be grave danger of 

 the usefulness of the Institute being seriously hampered by a 

 mixture of j^oditical interference and political inertia. In other 

 words, it will probably ere long be dragged down into the dull 

 and spiritless routine of a Sub-Sub-Department of the Common- 

 wealth Public Service. The free spirit of scientific inquiry^ does 

 not thrive in the atmosphere which surrounds the vote-catching 

 machine. In any case, at the present intellectual level of our 

 Australian Democracy, science could hope to catch but few votes. 

 The prospects of the Institute maintaining the high level of 

 achievement, which it has hitherto shown, and becoming of peniia- 

 nent service to the country, like the British National Physical 

 Laboratory or the United States Bureau of Standards, are there- 

 fore growing dim. Already the country is the poorer through 

 failure of the powers that be to take seriously, and to give effect 

 to, recommendations which the Institute, or rather the Advisory 



