October 19, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



373 



method lies in the fact that the efforts and 

 attention of the individuals concerned are 

 to a greater or less extent and more or less 

 permanently deflected from their proper 

 business of investigation and that certain 

 dangers and abuses might conceivably arise 

 from the too close identification of the in- 

 dividual and the laboratory in which he 

 works with purely biisiness enterprise. 



In other instances, of which Ehrlich's 

 disposal of the proceeds from salvarsan 

 affords the most illustrious example, the 

 discoverer has patented his invention, 

 leased the patents to manufacturers, and 

 dedicated the proceeds to the furtherance 

 of a particular field of research, usually 

 closely allied to the field from which the 

 patented discovery arose. While the re- 

 sult of this procedure in the particular 

 example chosen to illustrate it was in the 

 highest degree successful, and the work ac- 

 complished by this means has been of in- 

 calculable value to humanity, yet, as a pre- 

 cedent, it has been felt by many that it 

 presents several imperfections, notably that 

 afforded by the association of an individual 

 investigator with a particular business 

 enterprise and the absence of any super- 

 vi-sory control over the commercial exploi- 

 tation of the discovery. 



The industrial fellowships which in re- 

 cent years have been established in many 

 institutions in the United States and par- 

 ticularly in affiliation with the Mellon In- 

 stitute of Pittsburgh, represent another 

 stage in the evolution of the relationship 

 between the sciences and the industries. 

 The industrial fellowship plan has proved 

 to be far more widely acceptable as a pre- 

 cedent than any of the plans which I have 

 heretofore mentioned. It is, however, more 

 especially designed to be of direct service 

 to existing industries, to bridge the gap 

 between pure science and industrial 

 progress and to meet the immediate needs 



of existing industries as they arise rather 

 than to initiate new developments of sci- 

 ence itself. Their purpose diverges, there- 

 fore, from that of the purely scientific in- 

 vestigator, and while they are of unques- 

 tionable value in the field for which they 

 are designed, they leave unsolved the prob- 

 lem of providing automatic support for the 

 development of the deeper foundations of 

 industrial and social evolution. 



A plan of wider scope, and applicable to 

 the support either of the pure sciences or 

 of industrial research was launched some 

 years ago by my former colleague Dr. F. 

 G. Cottrell, in the form of the Research 

 Corporation of New York,^ to which he 

 donated certain of his patent rights in his 

 electrical precipitation process. The cer- 

 tificate of incorporation of this company 

 decares that its purposes are : 



(a) To receive by gift and to acquire by 

 purchase or otherwise, inventions, patent 

 rights and letters patent either of the 

 United States or foreign countries and to 

 hold, manage, use, develop, manufacture, 

 install and operate the same, and to con- 

 duct commercial operations under or in 

 connection with the development of such 

 inventions, patent rights and letters patent 

 and to sell, license or otherwise dispose of 

 same and to collect royalties thereon, and 

 to experiment with and test the validity 

 and value thereof and to render the same 

 more available and effective in the useful 

 arts and manufactures and for scientific 

 purposes and otherwise. 



(6) To provide means for the advance- 

 ment and extension of technical and scien- 

 tific investigation, research and experi- 

 mentation by contributing the net earnings 

 of the corporation, over and above such 



1 ' ' The Research Corporation, An Experiment in 

 Public Administration of Patent Rights," Eighth 

 International Congress of Applied Chemistry, New 

 York meeting, October, 1912, Vol. XXIA^, p. 59. 



