2A ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
The industrial revolution, our mechanized civilization, the shrink- 
ing of the world through advances in communication and transporta- 
tion have all come as a direct application of our knowledge of low- 
energy or extranuclear phenomena. Indirectly it has been responsible 
for the political and economic organization of the whole earth. Our 
present age might well be classified as an extranuclear age. 
Since the explosion of the atomic bomb, and the achievement of the 
release of nuclear energy on a large scale, it seems rather clear that 
we are now entering a new period in which nuclear phenomena are 
destined to have an important part in shaping the world, at least 
politically if not economically, in the very near future. Just how 
great will be the influence on the world of our knowledge of nuclear 
phenomena no one can say. 
It is only 50 years since our direct knowledge of the electron was 
not much more than a faint green glow in a glass tube—and now no 
one would deny that our knowledge of the properties of the electron 
has had an effect of profound importance in shaping our civilization. 
It is also only about 50 years since the world’s knowledge of nuclear 
phenomena consisted of nothing more than the thoughts passing 
through the mind of Becquerel as he pondered a darkened area on a 
photographic plate. At present our knowledge of all these fields is 
incomplete, but particularly is this true of nuclear phenomena, and 
most particularly true of high-energy phenomena or the phenomena 
of the elementary particles. 
So far, the world’s knowledge of the phenomena of high energies 
or the interactions between the elementary particles is represented by 
nothing more than a few printed pages in the scientific journals, by 
discussions among physicists, or perhaps by an occasional lecture. 
But we can look forward with anticipation and even excitement to 
the new discoveries which are surely to come as studies are carried 
forward of elementary particles and very high-energy processes. New 
phenomena of great beauty, extreme complexity, and novelty are 
certain to be revealed and finally to be understood. Whether our 
knowledge of these new phenomena will then exert a great or a small 
influence on the world as a whole no one can say. I believe it would 
be most unwise, however, in the light of the history of scientific 
development, to expect this influence to be small. 
