52 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



only one side of science — they find themselves in a physics-chemistry 

 groove, and this groove may become a rut. My own experience of 

 students from secondary schools (including public schools) proceeding to 

 a university honours degree in chemistry shows that not more than i in 12 

 has had any previous contact with biological science. Apart from the 

 special and intimate relationships between chemistry and vital phenomena, 

 such a state of affairs is regrettable on general and cultural grounds. 



After the School Certificate stage our future chemist appropriately 

 begins some specialisation in science, either during his last years at school 

 or during his first year at University or College. The special science 

 teaching in secondary schools now reaches in many cases a high level of 

 excellence, but owing to various causes, notably scholarship requirements, 

 the extent of specialisation in physics, chemistry and mathematics during 

 these last two years has become excessive. Not only does this involve a 

 reduction of time and energy for desirable cultural subjects, such as history 

 and English language and literature, but it may mean that the student comes 

 to the University without a mastery of the tools which he will later need 

 in his specialist work. In the case of the chemist this applies especially 

 to the German language, and at the moment we have the absurd position 

 that many University Departments of Chemistry are finding it necessary 

 to teach their students German, while the schools on the other hand are 

 busy giving specialist instruction of University standard. 



The student who has passed the Intermediate Science stage and who 

 has decided to become a chemist has two or three years' training in front 

 of him before he enters for his final examinations. In what way can the 

 most profitable use be made of this time ? The attempt to answer this 

 question in detail would be out of place here, but there are a few general 

 considerations which should not be forgotten in connection with this stage 

 in the training of the chemist. In the earlier portion of this address 

 emphasis was laid on the extreme diversity of the tasks which the chemist 

 may be called upon to undertake in his professional career, and clearly, 

 therefore, it is the basic principles of the science that should mainly occupy 

 his attention during his University curriculum. His training must be on 

 broad fundamental lines, and any attempt to plan a University under- 

 graduate course with a view to preparation for some specific chemical 

 occupation, such as paper-making or dyestuff manufacture, is entirely mis- 

 conceived. 



On the other hand, the breadth of the chemist's undergraduate training 

 may be sacrificed to intensive and perhaps excessive study of some 

 academic aspect of the subject. The criticism is made to-day — and in my 

 view it has some justification— that our graduates in chemistry are weak 

 in their grasp of the fundamentals of the science. It is said that they can 

 talk at length about nuclear spins, valency angles, electron sinks, energy 

 levels and so on, but are astonishingly uncertain about more elementary 

 and practical matters. The explanation is not far to seek. Discoveries 

 in atomic physics, radioactivity and other fields have revolutionised the 

 outlook ; our basic ideas about matter and energy have been radically 

 altered and extended ; chemical properties and reactions have been re- 

 interpreted in terms of the electron and the quantum. The interest and 

 significance of these developments are obvious, and all sound chemical 



