NOVEMBEB 30, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



521 



yergent" laboratories and the second "di- 

 vergent. ' ' ' 



In the "divergent" group of laborator- 

 ies are included all those institutions 

 where research is carried on which are in- 

 terested in science in general or in science 

 as applied to industry and which will at- 

 tack any problem which may seem to prom- 

 ise progress in knowledge or, in the case of 

 an industrial laboratory, financial return. 

 Most university laboratories are of this 

 tj'pe. When they devote themselves to spe- 

 cial problems it is usually because of the 

 predilection of some professor, and as a 

 general rule a student or instructor may 

 choose any problem in the whole field of 

 the science in which he is working and may 

 carrj' out an investigation on that problem 

 if he be interested in it without regard to 

 the relation of his work to the other work 

 which is carried on in the same laboratory. 



Correspondingly, in most industrial lab- 

 oratories the problems investigated are 

 those which present themselves as a result 

 of factory experience or of suggestions 

 from the men working in the laboratory 

 and which promise financial return, and 

 the different problems carried on in the 

 ^ame laboratory are not necessarily related 

 in any way whatever. 



The greater number of university and in- 

 dustrial laboratories are necessarily of this 

 type. It would be a disadvantage for a 

 university laboratory, whose primary busi- 

 ness is training students, to be too nar- 

 ^■owly specialized. Specialized university 

 laboratories are only desirable in the case 

 of post-graduate students, and it would be 

 ,very inadvisable to allow the laboratories 

 responsible for the general training of sci- 

 entific men to specialize in one branch of 

 science, since as a result the students would 

 .acquire a proper acquaintance with only a 

 limited portion of their subject. 



Industrial laboratories, on the other 

 Jiand, must necessarily be prepared to deal 



with any problems presented by the works, 

 and as these will be of all kinds, covering 

 generally the whole field of physics, chem- 

 istry and engineering, it is impossible for 

 the usual works laboratory to specialize ex- 

 cept in so far as it deals with the works 

 processes themselves. 



In the "convergent" laboratories, how- 

 ever, although the actual investigations 

 may cover as great a range of science as 

 those undertaken in a "divergent" labora- 

 tory, yet all those investigations are di- 

 rected toward a common end; that is, 

 towards the elucidation of associated prob- 

 lems related to one subject. Thus, the staff 

 of the Geophysical Laboratory, which in- 

 cludes physicists, geologists, crystallog- 

 raphers, mineralogists and chemists, works 

 on the structure of the rocks, and although 

 the field of the actual investigations ranges 

 from high temperature photometiy to the 

 physical chemistry of the phase rule, yet 

 the results of all the work carried out are 

 converged on the problem of the structure 

 and the origin of the earth's crust. 



The Nela Park Laboratory, in the same 

 way, is studj'ing the production, distribu- 

 tion and measurement of illumination, and 

 all its work, which may involve physiology, 

 phj-sics and chemistrj-, is related to that 

 one subject. Such convergent laboratories 

 sometimes develop in universities owing to 

 the intense interest of a professor in a 

 single subject and to the enthusiasm which 

 inspires students and assistants to collabo- 

 rate with him and to concentrate all their 

 energies on the same group of problems. 

 There are many examples of such labora- 

 tories, such as the laboratories dealing with 

 radio-activity, and those which are con- 

 cerned chiefly with spectroscopy. Among 

 others may be mentioned the Cavendish 

 Laboratory at Cambridge and several of 

 the larger university laboratories which 

 deal with the physical chemistry of solu- 

 tions. 



