50 



NATURE 



[September 8, 192 1 



problem, each research association undertaking 

 that phase of the work in which it is specially 

 interested and sharing in the general results. 



As researches carried out under the Department 

 frequently produce results for which it is possible 

 to take out patents, careful consideration has been 

 given to the problems of policy arising on this 

 subject, and other Government Departments also 

 interested have been freely consulted. As the 

 result, an Inter-Departmental Committee has been 

 established with the following terms of refer- 

 ence : — 



(i) To consider the methods of dealing with in- 

 ventions made by workers aided or maintained 

 from public funds, whether such workers be en- 

 gaged (a) as research workers, or (h) in some other 

 technical capacity, so as to give a fair reward to 

 the inventor and thus encourage further effort, to 

 secure the utilisation in industry of suitable inven- 

 tions and to protect the national interest ; and 



(2) To outline a course of procedure in respect 

 of inventions arising out of State-aided or sup- 

 ported work which shall further these aims and be 

 suitable for adoption by all Government Depart- 

 ments concerned. 



About forty patents have been taken out by the 

 Department jointly with the inventors and other 

 interested bodies, but of these nine have after- 

 wards been abandoned. At least five patents 

 have been developed to such a stage as to be ready 

 for immediate industrial application. 



It will be obvious from this short summary of 

 the activities of the Department of Scientific 

 and Industrial Research, based upon in- 

 formation kindly supplied to me by Sir Francis 

 Ogilvie, that this great scheme of Statcraided re- 

 search has been conceived and is administered on 

 broad and liberal lines. A considerable number of 

 valuable reports from its various boards and com- 

 mittees have already been published, and others 

 are in the press, but it is, of course, much too 

 soon to appreciate the full effects of their opera- 

 tions ; but it can scarcely be doubted that they are 

 bound to exercise a profound influence upon indus- 

 tries which ultimately depend upon discovery and 

 invention. The establishment of the Department 

 marks an epoch in our history. No such compre- 

 hensive organisation for the application of science 

 to national needs has ever been created by any 

 other State. We may say we owe it directly to 

 the Great War. Even from the evil of that great 

 catastrophe there is some soul of goodness would 

 we observingly distil it out. 



I turn now to a question of scientific interest 

 which is attracting general attention at the present 

 time. It is directly connected with Lord Kelvin's 

 address fifty years ago. 



The molecular theory of matter — a theory which 

 in its crudest form has descended to us from the 

 earliest times, and which has been elaborated by 

 various speculative thinkers through the inter- 

 vening ages, scarcely rested upon an experimental 

 basis until within the memory of men still living. 



NO. 2706, VOL. 108] 



When Lord Kelvin spoke in 1871, the best-estab- 

 lished development of the molecular hypothesis 

 was exhibited in the kinetic theory of gases as 

 worked out by Joule, Clausius, and Clerk 

 Maxwell. As he then said, no such comprehensive 

 molecular theory had ever been even imagined 

 before the nineteenth century; but, with the eye 

 of faith, he clearly perceived that, definite and 

 complete in its area as it was, it was "but a well- 

 drawn part of a great chart, in which all physical 

 science will be represented with every property of 

 matter shown in dynamical relation to the whole. 

 The prospect we now have of an early completion 

 of this chart is based on the assumption of atoms ; 

 but there can be no permanent satisfaction to the 

 mind in explaining heat, light, elasticity, diffusion, 

 electricity and magnetism, in gases, liquids, and 

 solids, and describing precisely the relations of 

 these different states of matter to one another by 

 statistics of great numbers of atoms when the 

 properties of the atom itself are simply assumed. 

 When the theory, of which we have the first in- 

 stalment in Clausius's and Maxwell's work, is 

 complete, we are but brought face to face with a 

 superlatively grand question : What is the inner 

 mechanism of the atom? " 



If the properties and affections of matter are 

 dependent upon the inner mechanism of the atom, 

 an atomic theory, to be valid, must comprehend 

 and explain them all. There cannot be one kind 

 of atom for the physicist and another for the 

 chemist. The nature of chemical aflfinity and of 

 valency, the modes of their action, the difference 

 in characteristics of the chemical elements, even 

 their number, internal constitution, periodic posi- 

 tion, and possible isotopic rearrangements must 

 be accounted for and explained by it. Fifty years 

 ago chemists, for the most part, rested in the com- 

 fortable belief of the existence of atoms in the 

 restricted sense in which Dalton, as a legacy from 

 Newton, had imagined them. Lord Kelvin, unlike 

 the chemists, had never been in the habit of 

 " evading questions as to the hardness or indivisi- 

 bility of atoms by virtually assuming them to be 

 infinitely small and infinitely numerous." Nor, on 

 the other hand, did he realise, with Boscovich, the 

 atom ** as a mystic point endowed with inertia and 

 the attribute of attracting or repelling other such 

 centres." Science advances not so much by funda- 

 mental alterations in its beliefs as by additions to 

 them. Dalton would equally have regarded the 

 atom " as a piece of matter of measurable dimen- 

 sions, with shape, motion, and laws of action, 

 intelligible subjects of scientific investigation." 



In spite of the fact that the atomic theory, as 

 formulated by Dalton, has been generally accepted 

 for nearly a century, it is only within the last few 

 years that physicists have arrived at a conception 

 of the structure of the atom suflficiently precise to 

 be of service to chemists in connection with the 

 relation between the properties of elements of dif- 

 ferent kinds, and in throwing light on the mech- 

 anism of chemical combination. 



This further investigation of the " superlatively 



