390 



NATURE 



[July 6, 191 6 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION AND 

 INDUSTRY, 



LORD CREWE announced at a meeting of the 

 governing body of the Imperial College of Science 

 and Technology on June 30 that it is the intention 

 of the Government to appoint a Special Committee 

 to inquire into the question of the position of science 

 in national education. It is proposed that the Com- 

 mittee, working in close concert with the President of 

 the Board of Education, shall include representa- 

 tives of pure science, of applications of science to 

 commerce and industry, and also those who are able 

 from general experience to correlate scientific teaching 

 with education as a whole. The Committee will 

 have a close connection with Government, and Lord 

 Crewe himself will be the chairman. The general 

 objects of the Committee will be, broadly speaking, 

 to inquire into the position of science in our educa- 

 tional system, especially in universities and secondary 

 schools. Its duty will be to advise the authorities 

 how to promote the advancement of pure science and 

 also the interest of trades, industries, and professions 

 dependent on the application of science, not neglecting 

 the needs of a liberal education. 



These objects are almost identical with those which 

 the British Science Guild and its various important 

 committees have been urging upon public attention 

 for the past ten years, without much practical support 

 from the scientific societies and educational associa- 

 tions, which only awakened to their importance after 

 the war had been upon us for some months. The 

 new Committee is to be connected with the Recon- 

 struction Committee appointed by the Prime Minister 

 in March last, to consider and advise upon the prob- 

 lems that will arise on the conclusion of peace, and 

 to co-ordinate the work which has already been done 

 by the Departments in this direction. Lord Crewe 

 said on June 30 that it had been thought wise that 

 the Prime Minister's Reconstruction Committee 

 should undertake the general supervision and review 

 of the changes which might be required in our 

 national system of education, rather than that this 

 inquiry should, as had been recommended, be en- 

 trusted to a Royal Commission. The possibility of 

 immediate action by any Department on any point 

 on which necessity for action was proved was a most 

 distinct and substantial gain over what would be 

 possible if the procedure had been by Royal Commis- 

 sion. It was clear that a review of our education 

 generally could not be regarded as strictly one of the 

 subjects of reconstruction after the war, but, on the 

 other hand, the two things could not be disconnected. 



Any suggestions or other communications from indi- 

 viduals or organisations bearing upon the inquiries 

 now being undertaken should be addressed to Mr. 

 Vaughan Nash, C.V.O., C.B., Secretary of the 

 Reconstruction Committee, 6a Dean's Yard, West- 

 minster. They will be considered and referred in 

 suitable cases to the Department concerned or to one 

 of the Sub-committees to which particular subjects 

 or groups of subjects have been referred by the 

 Reconstruction Committee. 



SCIENCE AND THE BREWING INDUSTRY.^ 



AT the commencement of the period under review, 

 when the author first became definitely asso- 

 ciated with the brewing industry, at Burton-on-Trent 

 in 1866, brewing operations were conducted on purely 

 empirical lines, the real nature of the processes in- 



' .Abstract of .1 paper read before the Institute of Brewing, Mav 8, on 

 " Some Reminiscen'-es o*" Fifty Years' Experienc<? of the Application of 

 Scientific Method to Brewing Pr.ictice." hv Br. Horace T. Brown, F.R.S. 



volved being unknown. The rational scientific control 

 of these operations which is possible to-day is the 

 outcome ot a vast amount of experimental study of 

 brewing problems, and this study has not only extended 

 the bounds of natural science beyond all expectations, 

 but has indirectly conferred incalculable benefits on the 

 human race by its influence on the development of 

 medicine, surgery, and sanitation. The views of 

 Berzelius and Liebig on fermentation were still widely 

 accepted fifty years ago, and the maladies to which 

 beer was subject were attributed to some indefinable 

 transformations of its albuminoid constituents. The 

 true nature of alcoholic fermentation as a normal func- 

 tion of the living yeast cell was elucidated by Pasteur, 

 who rendered immense services to the fermentation 

 industries by his studies on the technology of vinegar, 

 wine (1863-66), and beer (1871-76), bringing to light 

 for the first time the action of bacteria in producing 

 disorders of these beverages. What is not generally 

 recognised is that his later work on infectious diseases 

 and immunisation, which laid the foundation of the 

 subsequent wonderful developments of preventive 

 medicine and hygiene, was the direct outcome of these 

 researches on the fermentation industries, and was in 

 large measure rendered possible by a technique which 

 he acquired therein. 



The reactions which take place in the brewer's 

 mash-tun were investigated by O 'Sullivan at one of 

 the Burton breweries, from about 1870 onwards, in 

 a series of researches, of the first importance, not 

 only to brewing, but to the chemistry of enzyme 

 action. Applying the polarimeter, an instrument 

 rarely used in this country at that time, he studied 

 the action of malt-diastase on starch, demonstrated 

 that the crystallisable sugar formed is not dextrose, 

 but maltose, and studied the quantitative relation of 

 the maltose and dextrin under varying conditions of 

 temperature. 



The study of malting processes was stimulated by 

 the transference of the excise tax from malt to beer, 

 in 1881, when certain restrictions on malting opera- 

 tions imposed by the authorities were removed. In a 

 long series of researches the author, in collaboration 

 with G. H. Morris and others, succeeded in bringing 

 to light the principal chemical and morphological 

 changes which go on in the barley grain during the 

 early stages of germination, and laid the foundation 

 of a scientific control of malting processes. He demon- 

 strated that the embryo of the grain is related to the 

 endosperm as a vegetable parasite to its host, that 

 there is no structural connection between the two, 

 and that If the surrounding integuments common to 

 both are removed the embryo can be readily separated 

 from the endosperm and reared into a perfect plant 

 by the application of suitable nutriment. In the ger- 

 minating barley grain the food reserve in the endo- 

 sperm is made available for the embryo by means of 

 diastatic, cytatic, and proteolytic enzymes secreted by 

 the epithelial cells of the scutellum of the embryo ; 

 these enzymes, projected into the endosperm, dissolve 

 the cell walls and corrode and dissolve the starch 

 granules. 



The study of the micro-organisms of fermentation 

 received a fresh impulse, some years after the con- 

 clusion of Pasteur's studies on beer, from the work 

 of Emil Chr. Hansen at Copenhagen. He intro- 

 duced new methods of investigation, distinguished the 

 primary brewers' yeast, Saccaromyces cerevisiae. from 

 other types capable of producing secondary changes 

 In beer, and introduced the practice, common on the 

 Continent, of using pure-culture yeasts, produced from 

 a single cell, for brewing. 



Manv of the problems which arise in connection 

 with the fermentation industries deserve the closest 

 attention of physiologists and pathologists. Inasmuch 



NO. 2436, VOL. 97] 



