408 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



Many women will, doubtless, become specialists in some 

 specific branch of science, particularly if they have a gen- 

 uine love for it, or be fired by an ambition to achieve 

 fame as discoverers. But it is not probable that they will 

 ever specialize to the same extent as men do. For men 

 scientific work has to a large extent become a metier, and 

 success, as in industry, depends on a division of labor. 

 Hence it is that their field of investigation is daily becom- 

 ing more and more circumscribed. This is observable in 

 all the sciences, but especially in such all-embracing sci- 

 ences as chemistry, biology, and archaeology. A man now 

 does well if he master a single branch of any of these 

 sciences, and is hailed as exceptionally fortunate if he 

 succeed in making some notable discovery in his limited 

 field of research. So great, indeed, has been the activity 

 of scientific men in every department of science during 

 the last half century, and so thoroughly have they explored 

 the most hidden recesses of nature, that it, at times, seems 

 as if there were but little left to discover. A prominent 

 scientist recently well expressed the difficulty of making 

 any striking additions to our knowledge of nature by 

 asserting that all great discoveries would hereafter be made 

 in the sixth place of decimals. This statement is well illus- 

 trated by the delicate experiments that were required to 

 isolate such rare elements as radium, polonium, helium 

 and neon, which occur only in infinitesimal quantities. 



While men of science will be forced to continue as spe- 

 cialists as long as the love of fame, to consider no other 

 motives of research, continues to be a potent influence in 

 their investigations, it is probable that women will have 

 less love for the long and tedious processes involved in the 

 more difficult kinds of specialization. They will, it seems 

 likely, be more inclined to acquire a general knowledge 

 of the whole circle of the sciences a knowledge that will 

 enable them to take a comprehensive survey of nature. 

 And it will be fortunate for themselves, as well as for 



