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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1188 



our schools for researcli men. From uni- 

 versity after university, from college after 

 college, the combined lure of great research 

 opportunities and of much larger financial 

 returns has taken from our academic life 

 far too many of our most promising young 

 men, the very men on whom the country 

 has been depending for the filling of our 

 great university chairs as the older men 

 now holding them gradually will age and 

 retire. Unless prompt measures are taken 

 we shall witness in a few years such a 

 dearth of first-class tried material for pro- 

 fessorships that second-rate men will be 

 placed where the national welfare needs 

 the best we have, and third- and fourth- 

 rate men will be occupying positions in 

 which we should have young men of the 

 highest promise in the period in which 

 they are reaching full maturity. Indeed, 

 it is greatly to be feared that even now we 

 are witnessing a gradual lowering of stand- 

 ards. It would be futile to appeal to our 

 industries not to call the men they need, al- 

 though in the not distant future they will 

 suffer most severely from the situation 

 which is developing, if the present tenden- 

 cies remain unchecked. The only possible 

 source of relief lies, I believe, with the 

 presidents and trustees of our great uni- 

 versities, and to these the second main plea 

 of this privileged discussion is addressed. 

 These authorities should recognize the fact 

 that their institutions have now entered a 

 period of severe competition between the 

 industries and academic life for chemists 

 of the highest type and greatest promise. 

 They have already learned the only method 

 of meeting this kind of competition suc- 

 cessfully, for they have faced the same 

 problem in two other professions, medicine 

 and law: in the face of the tremendous 

 financial attractions of the practise of 

 either of these professions our most pro- 

 gressive universities have simply put their 



law and their medical faculties on a higher, 

 more nearly professional scale of endow- 

 ment of professorships than obtains for 

 their other faculties. They must, it seems 

 to me, take the same measures with their 

 chemistry staffs: it is primarily a question 

 whether they can be awakened to that need 

 now or whether they will let the country 

 suffer from their lack of foresight and let 

 us learn from the most efficient of our 

 teachers, bitter experience. Wise provis- 

 ion now would not only safeguard our pres- 

 ent standing in a critical period of our his- 

 tory, but in this time when the importance 

 of chemistry has been brought home to our 

 young men as never before, the new atti- 

 tude, properly announced, would attract a 

 large proportion of the men of brains, tal- 

 ent and ambition who enter professional 

 life, but tend to study law or medicine as 

 holding out much greater opportunities for 

 the satisfying of their ambitions. 



Adequate compensation is important for 

 a researcli man — and to his type in uni- 

 versity and college I must restrict my re- 

 marks — it is important both from the point 

 of view of his self-respect and also espe- 

 cially for the sake of comparative freedom 

 from worry concerning a fair provision for 

 his family. But inadequate compensation 

 is not the only danger seriously threaten- 

 ing the outlook for chemistry in our uni- 

 versities. Let us remember that healthy 

 progress in our science is dependent pri- 

 marily on university men pursuing great 

 lines of original investigation. It is true 

 that we now have well-endowed national 

 institutions of research, such as the Rocke- 

 feller Institute and the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion, but universities can not afford to sur- 

 render to these the main burden of insur- 

 ing progress in the theory of our science, 

 because these a?-e not teaching institutions. 

 To take from our universities the choicest 

 of our research men would deprive our 



