I'RESlUEi^l'IAL AUORESS. 143 



of auy kiiid, may also have something to say before this uitra-ceiitralisatiou 

 becomes an accomplished fact. 



There is, it seems to me, another danger to be avoided besides that of 

 undue centralisation in London, in most of the statements 1 have seen regarding 

 the promotion of research work the emphasis seems to be on industrial research, 

 that IS m applied science. This kind of research includes the investigation oi 

 physical and chemical products of various kinds which may be used in arts and 

 manufactures, and its deliberate organised promotion ought to be a commercial 

 aflair. 1 observed, by the way, with some amusement, that according to the 

 proposals of one Committee for Applied JScience, which is prepared to give grants 

 and premiums for researches and results, the JProfessor or Head of a JL)epart- 

 ment, from whom will generally come what are most important, the ideas, is to 

 have no payment. He is supposed to be so well paid by the institution he 

 belongs to as to require no remuneration for his supervision of the Committee's 

 researches. And the results are to be the sole property of the Committee ! 



There is in this delightfully calm proposal at least a suggestion of compulsion 

 and of interference with institutions and their stafi's, which ought to be well 

 examined. Also some light is thrown on the ideas of such people as managing 

 directors of limited rliabiiity companies, who are members of such a committee, 

 as to what might reasonably be expected of men of high attainments and skill, 

 whose emoluments taken aJl round are on the whole miserably insufficient. 



I think that it is in danger of being forgotten that, after ail, pui-e 

 science is by far the most important thing. Most of the great applications of 

 science have been the products of discoveries which were made without any 

 notion of such an outcome. Witness the tremendous series of results in 

 electricity of which the beginning was Faraday's and Henry's researches on 

 induction of currents, and the conclusion was the work of Hertz om electric waves. 

 From the first came the production and ti-ansmission of power by electricity, 

 from the last the world has received the gift of wireless telegraphy. 1 am not 

 at all sure whether the great men who worked in the sixty or seventy years 

 which I have indicated would have always received grants for proposed 

 researches, which to many of the good business directors and other supermen 

 serving on a great bureau of investigation, had such then existed, would have 

 appeared fantastic and visionary. In research, in pure science at least, control 

 will inevitably defeat itself. The scientific discoverer hardly knows whither 

 he is being led; by a path he knows not he comes to his own. He should be 

 free as the wind. But I must not be misunderstood. Most certainly it is rigut 

 to encourage research in applied science by all available and legitimate means. 

 But beware of attempting to control or ' capture ' the laboratories of pure 

 science in the Universities and Colleges of the country. Let there be also ample 

 provision for the pursuit of science for it.^ own sake; the return will in the 

 future as in the past surpass all expectation. 



I had intended to say .something about scientific education as exemplified by 

 the teaching of physics. 1 have left myself little time or space for this, i 

 cannot quite pass the matter over, but I shall compress my remarks. In the first 

 place I regard dynamics, especially rotatioinal dynamics, as the foundation of all 

 physics, and it is axiomatic that the foundation of a great structure should be 

 soundly and solidly laid. The implications of dynamics are at present undergoing 

 a very strict and searching examimation, and now we may say that a step in 

 advance has been taken from the Newtonian standpoint, and that a new and 

 important development of dynamics has come into being. I refer of course to the 

 new theories of relativity, which are now attracting so much attention. I hope to 

 learn from the discussions, which we may possibly have, something of the latest 

 ideas on this very fundamental subject of research. It is a matter for con- 

 gratulation that 60 many excellent accounts of relativity are now available in 

 English. Some earlier discussions are so very general in their mathematical 

 treatment and notation as to be exceedingly difficult to master completely. I 

 have attacked Minkowski's paper more than once, but have felt repelled, not bv 

 the difficulties of his analysis, but by that of marshalling and keeping track of 

 all his results. Einstein's papers I have not yet been able to obtain. Hence it 

 18 a source of gratification to have Professor Eddington's interesting Eeport to 

 the Physical Society and the otlier excellent treatises which we have^in Eng-lish. 



