io6 GERMAN SCIENCE 



fructify in a host of minor discoveries and in countless practical 

 applications. 



We have only to think of Dalton, Young, Davy, Faraday, 

 Joule, Kelvin, Stokes, Darwin, Lyell, Clerk-Maxwell, and 

 Huggins among the giants of the nineteenth century to realize 

 the truth of what I say. And it would be easy to make up a 

 list of those who are with us now that would match the best 

 names of any other country. 



In one branch certainly, in physics, we are not only eminent, 

 we are supreme. Radium, it is true, was discovered by 

 a Polish lady in a French laboratory, but the revolutionary 

 science that has arisen from it, the ideas that have thrown an 

 entirely new and unexpected light on natural phenomena and 

 have opened up a new chapter of science will always be 

 associated primarily with the names of an Englishman, Sir 

 Joseph Thomson of Cambridge, and of a son of Greater 

 Britain a New Zealander, Sir Ernest Rutherford of Man- 

 chester. I am proud to add that in the event of the hour our 

 Professor Bragg stands in the very forefront. 



It is in followers that we are lacking. If a man has it in 

 him to become a great investigator if he has in him the subtle 

 spirit of real genius, he will, we believe, realize himself in the 

 face of most formidable obstacles. He will be there ready to 

 lead and inspire. But if the conditions of the time, the temper 

 of thought, and the influence of the State are detached from him, 

 what is he likely to remain but a prophet crying in the wilder- 

 ness? This has been the plight of most of our English 

 scientific leaders. 



I now wish to say something about German science in 

 relation to industries. Here again I shall be compelled by 

 the limits of my knowledge and experience to confine myself 

 to chemistry, but here again I have to be thankful that 

 chemical science is the one which is most widely applicable to 

 manufacturing processes. 



