284 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



quired, not only as to mathematical training, but as to temperament and 

 personality as well. 



The Petroleum Industry 



The petroleum industry consists of many producing units of various 

 sizes, highly competitive in character, and surrounded by a number of 

 consulting service organizations, all of which are small. The larger produc- 

 ing companies — and within their resources, the service units also — maintain 

 research laboratories. They tend to be secretive about the developments 

 which take place in these, sometimes to a surprising degree. Hence there 

 is much duplication of efifort, particularly in such matters as the design of 

 instruments for geophysical prospecting, and in methods of interpreting the 

 data derived from them. 



Number of Mathematicians. The industry employs more mathematicians 

 than is generally appreciated, some of them men of very considerable ability. 

 The total of first-rank men is perhaps 15 or 20. Due to the small size of the 

 individual research staffs, however, most of these men carry considerable 

 project responsibility along with their theoretical work. This is the 

 normal state of affairs in small groups: the abnormality is the lack of 

 contact with, and stimulus from, similar men in other companies. 



Uses of Mathematics. Petroleum research extends in three directions: 

 prospecting for oil, producing it, and refining it. 



There are five recognized methods of prospecting: gravity, seismic, 

 electric, magnetic and chemical. In the first four, important mathematical 

 problems arise in designing sufficiently sensitive instruments and in inter- 

 preting data. The fifth requires the use of statistical methods. 



Research on methods of producing a field has led to a few mathematical 

 studies of underground flow, and would undoubtedly give rise to others if 

 the results of these studies could be profitably applied. However, since 

 the rate at which oil is brought to the surface is almost entirely determined 

 by law, and the same is indirectly true of well location also, mathematical 

 consideration of the subject is largely sterile, at least so far as American 

 oil fields are concerned. 



The third activity — refining — is essentially a chemical industry. Hence 

 the following remarks by Dr. E. C. Williams, Vice President in Charge of 

 Research of the Shell Development Company, presumably apply not only 

 to the petroleum business, but to manufacturing chemistry in general : 



"The two chief problems in chemistry are (aside from the identification of 

 substances): The calculation of chemical equilibrium and the calculation of the 

 rates of attainment of these equilibria. The first problem, involving thermo- 



