B.— CHEMISTRY 47 



Britain are presenting important problems in this direction. It has been 

 estimated, for example, that if the waste waters from all the beet sugar 

 factories in this country were discharged into our streams they would 

 cause as much pollution as untreated sewage from a population of four 

 or five millions. The effluents from dairies and factories making milk 

 products present a similar problem. Thanks, however, to research activity, 

 largely at the instance of the Water Pollution Research Board, the disposal 

 or purification of these and other trade effluents is being effectively 

 achieved. 



The question of river purification demands for satisfactory handling, as 

 already indicated, the collaboration of other scientists with the chemist, and 

 indeed the attack on many such problems, especially those affecting the 

 health of the community, is likely to be successful only by the co-operation 

 of teams of scientific workers from different fields. Smoke and fog, 

 which not only present the scientist with interesting phenomena but 

 constitute also a social and industrial problem of vital importance, concern 

 the physicist, the physical chemist, the analyst, the fuel engineer and the 

 meteorologist, and it is only when the knowledge and experience of these 

 workers are pooled that there is any hope of interpreting the phenomena 

 and solving the problem. Again, recent developments in cancer research 

 make it clear that apart from the pathologist, who is mainly concerned, 

 the chemist has a very definite contribution to make to our knowledge 

 of this baffling disease. Some of the most fruitful scientific investigation, 

 indeed, is co-operative in character. 



Research, whether fundamental or directed, is by no means the only 

 outlet for the chemist's knowledge and craftsmanship. The works control 

 of chemical processes, the examination of factory products, the safe- 

 guarding of the purity of food, and the supervision of water supplies and 

 sanitation, are examples of other activities of a more routine character 

 in which large numbers of chemists are engaged. These are, so to speak, 

 the general practitioners of the chemical profession, and their contribution 

 to the smooth running of industry and to healthy living is far greater 

 than most people suppose. I have myself been surprised, in a recent 

 survey of the present occupations of my former students, by the extra- 

 ordinary variety of the work in which chemically trained men may be 

 engaged. This survey shows that photographic emulsions, beer, high- 

 speed steel, printing ink, linoleum, dental cream, gramophone records, 

 bank notes, and mineral waters, are a few of the materials with the pro- 

 duction of which the chemist is concerned, either in the laboratory or 

 the works. It is true to say that in the industry of the country the chemist 

 is ubiquitous. 



A few moments ago I spoke of the ' chemical profession,' and the 

 phrase was used deliberately ; it is really time that the British public 

 and its leaders recognised the validity and the implications of the term. 

 A profession is a vocation demanding high educational and technical 

 qualifications, and it connotes also the body of those who by virtue of 

 their qualifications are able to serve the needs and welfare of society in 

 some particular field. On all these counts chemistry should have a 

 place beside medicine, law, and engineering. That the public is so slow 



