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National Resources Planning Board 



upon research in border-line fields, or which make 

 large use of such research, have appeared in very con- 

 siderable numbers over the past 20 years. The group 

 method of research has received a very considerable 

 portion of its impetus from industrial effort, for the 

 technique is as applicable there as anywhere else. We 

 shall be concerned in this section with this service of re- 

 search in border-line fields to industrial enterprise. 



In defining the scope and extent of border-line 

 research, especially in its industrial apphcation, it is 

 necessary to set fairly arbitrary limits. As has been 

 indicated, a discipline which was considered as a bor- 

 der line in one generation will be considered as an es- 

 tablished field in the next. Thus, the border-line 

 science of biochemistry is in the transition stage between 

 its classification as a border line and its recognition as 

 a full discipline. It is just at the peak of the active 

 and highly productive stage which usually marks this 

 transition. It has journals and texts of its own, but 

 it still lacks the status of physical chemistry. Bio- 

 physics is in a less developed phase, where it may defi- 

 nitely be classed as a border line. There are still rela- 

 tivly few really competently trained workers in the field, 

 there is no adequate journal, there are few good text- 

 books, yet work in that discipline is of the very highest 

 importance. 



Geochemistry and geophysics, because of their 

 relative youth and the restricted practical applications 

 which have so far been made of them, except of geo- 

 physics in mining and metallurgical spheres, are today 

 to be definitely regarded as among the younger, border 

 line sciences. 



If for the frame of reference in which judgment as to 

 the character of a discipline is made, its industrial appli- 

 cation is taken, several other fields, not ordinarily 

 considered border line in character, should be included. 

 If we include in our definition of border-line disciplines 

 not only those which overlap the sciences in their treat- 

 ment of subject material, but those which are today in 

 the pioneering stage of industrial application, we can- 

 not ignore the special sciences of geology with its 

 subscience mineralogy, and of rheology. Mineralogy 

 has hardly budded from geology as a special science, 

 and it is today one of the frontier disciplines from the 

 standpoint of its application to a well-defined class of 

 industries. Rheology, the science of the study of 

 plastic flow, is a recent arrival from the domain of 

 physics. Recently, in the United States, it has acliieved 

 the dignity of a joiu-nal of its own, and it includes a 

 sufficient number among its professional disciples to 

 warrant the maintenance of a national society. It is 

 the handmaiden of a considerable range of industries, 

 though its application there, as that of a consciously 

 organized science, is of very recent date. It is especi- 

 ally helpful in the chemical industries, especially in 



that extremely important and still rapidly developing 

 field of plastics. 



Geology is one of the oldest of the sciences, and surely 

 can present no claim to be of border-line character on 

 the first definition. But upon the second, its claim is 

 very real. Its first apphcation to industry is not of 

 very recent date, for a qualitative knowledge of geology 

 has of course long been a part of the stock in trade of 

 every mining engineer. The recent highly significant 

 extensions of geological science and method, however, 

 its inclusion within its operating resources of many 

 novel teclmiques, and the expansion of its field of 

 interests have in recent years very greatly changed the 

 science as a whole and widened and radically modified 

 its industrial applications. It should, therefore, quite 

 definitely be included among the border lines of the 

 second class. 



The fields which have thus been selected as repre- 

 sentative in the classes of border-hne disciplines which 

 we have defined include biochemistry, biophysics, 

 geology, geochemistry, geophysics, and rheology. We 

 may consider each of these very briefly to point out 

 some of the more representative developments of the 

 fields, and some of the more obvious opportunities 

 which may await development in some of them and in 

 the method of border-line research in general. 



Biochemistry 



The science of biochemistry in general is the servant 

 of a very large number of industries, most of which, 

 naturally enough, concern living matter in some form. 

 Prominent among the commercial enterprises so served 

 are the industries dealing with food packing and preser- 

 vation, food production (the agricultural industries), 

 biologically produced solvents, pharmaceuticals, leather, 

 gums, resins, oils, fats, waxes, soaps, and other plant 

 and animal byproducts, to mention only a represent- 

 ative few. 



The science of the application of chemical methods to 

 the preparation of foods found its beginnings in the days 

 of Liebig. That of the disinfection and preservation of 

 food materials and the manufacture of products by 

 controlled fermentation, not to mention the entire 

 recognition of biochemistry as a coherent discipline, is 

 surely due to the genius of the immortal chemist-biolo- 

 gist Pasteur. If biochemistry thus originated in a 

 i-easonably remote period, its meteoric rise to the front 

 rank of dynamic sciences has been a development of 

 the last 30 years, and its widespread industrial applica- 

 tion has come even more recently. Today, a large 

 number of highly important industries are primarily 

 dependent for their technological advance upon the 

 science of biochemistry, and biochemistry serves a 

 further considerable number in subsidiary fashion. 



