B.— CHEMISTRY 45 



but it has become abundantly clear, so far at least as knowledge and dis- 

 covery in the realm of pure chemistry are concerned, that we must take 

 a very long view indeed in assessing their practical value. Again and again 

 in the history of the science observations and discoveries have been made, 

 which at the time were of purely scientific interest but which later received 

 important practical applications. The laboratory curiosities of a former 

 generation, such as aluminium and tungsten, have become the industrial 

 commonplaces of the present. The application of exact methods of 

 measuring density revealed the presence of a new gas in the atmosphere — 

 a discovery of purely scientific interest in the first place — which has led 

 to a whole train of remarkable consequences, from a drastic revision of our 

 ideas about the elements to the widespread development of illuminated 

 signs. Just one hundred years ago, at the Bristol meeting of the Asso- 

 ciation in 1836, Edmund Davy announced the discovery of a ' new gaseous 

 bicarburet of hydrogen,' now familiar as acetylene. Decades passed, 

 however, before the novel gas acquired any practical significance, and indeed 

 it was not until 1892, when a large-scale method for producing calcium 

 carbide was discovered, that acetylene became of industrial importance. 

 Since then its applications have gone ahead rapidly, and its uses in illumina- 

 tion, in welding, in metal-cutting, and in the synthetic production of 

 organic chemicals are known to us all. In view of these lessons from 

 the history of chemical science one hesitates to apply the epithet ' useless ' 

 to any specific observation or discovery, however ' academic' Reflection 

 indeed suggests that the really big changes in the material conditions 

 of human life have generally had their origin in a search for knowledge 

 on its own account. 



There is, however, much more to be said on this matter of fundamental ox 

 academic research. A solution of the most practical of chemical problems 

 on rational and scientific lines is possible only because of our accumulated 

 knowledge of natural phenomena and natural laws. It is only against 

 the background provided by the pure research of yesterday that the techni- 

 cal problems of to-day can be viewed in their proper setting and tackled 

 with a reasonable prospect of success. I would submit, therefore, that 

 work in pure science, remote as it generally is from the practical issues 

 of the moment, is building up a real reserve of knowledge and technique 

 on which future generations of practical workers will be able to draw. 



Apart from the chemists who are engaged, mostly in our Universities 

 and Colleges, but to some extent also in the larger research institutes, 

 in the general task of extending the boundaries of knowledge, there are 

 many more who are carrying on what may be called ' directed ' research. 

 Their work aims at the solution of some specific problem, concerned, 

 it may be, with the improvement of an industrial process, the elimination 

 of waste, the safeguarding of health, the utilisation of by-products, the 

 synthesis of antidotes. More definitely, and by way of example, the object 

 may be to discover a fast blue dye, to purify a water supply, to find a 

 rustless steel, to produce petrol from coal, to isolate a vitamin, to make a 

 non-inflammable film or a creaseless cotton fabric. The general public, 

 however dubious about pure research, would probably admit thatj 4 the 

 satisfactory solution of any one of these problems would be of service to 



