B.— CHEMISTRY 55 



primarily chemists but who have to handle large-scale operations on 

 engineering lines. Why should this fact not be faced and the appropriate 

 adjustments made in our University courses of training ? It is true that 

 at the present time some men trained in pure chemistry take a post- 

 graduate course in chemical engineering, but this is a piecemeal way of 

 acquiring the relevant knowledge and technique, and the welding of the 

 two disciplines in a balanced curriculum should produce much better 

 results. If the Universities will take this matter in hand, the training of 

 the chemical engineer will be moulded on lines consistent with that study 

 of fundamental knowledge which it is the function of the Universities to 

 promote. 



As in medicine, the man who is at the end of a chemical undergraduate 

 training is only at the beginning of that experience of life and practice 

 which will make him a mature member of his profession. In some cases, 

 depending on aptitude and temperament, it is best that this further 

 experience should be begun outside the University and that the new 

 chemical graduate should at once exchange the comparative calm of 

 academic lecture-rooms and laboratories for the rough and tumble of 

 industrial conditions. These are the cases in which sufficient technical 

 basis is provided in the undergraduate course for a career which will lie 

 more in the field of production management and administration than in 

 that of scientific control and development. 



On the other hand, in the majority of cases, the chemist who has just 

 completed his first degree curriculum is well advised to spend one or two 

 post-graduate years at the University, either in research or advanced 

 study, securing in this way the opportunity for more intensive and 

 deliberate work in some special field. While I do not consider that 

 research should invariably be the occupation of the post-graduate chemist, 

 it is essential that all those with distinct originality and with ambition to 

 extend the boundaries of knowledge should have the chance of learning 

 the art of the pioneer and of experiencing the thrill of discovery. It is from 

 the ranks of such post-graduate workers that the Davys and the Faradays, 

 the Ramsays and the Perkins of the future must be recruited, and 

 accordingly joint research by staff and students should be a prominent 

 feature of all chemical departments in our Universities and Colleges. 

 If the investigations proceeding in any one department are of a varied 

 character, so much the better, for where a single field is being explored 

 on established lines, an individual worker may be little more than a cog 

 in a wheel, with only slight benefit to himself. 



In the case of those who have no apparent talent or inclination for 

 research, the post-graduate period is more profitably spent in acquiring 

 special knowledge of some particular field. With a thorough under- 

 graduate training in chemistry as a background, intensive work in, say, 

 biochemistry, agricultural chemistry, metallurgy, or the chemistry of 

 food and drugs, provides technical qualifications of a valuable order. At 

 the same time, it must not be forgotten that, however good the post- 

 graduate training in research or advanced study may have been, the chemist 

 will be faced with new problems and new situations when he enters the 

 works laboratory or the factory. This marks the opening of a fresh 



