658 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1434 



which was about the equipment with which 

 Faraday made some of his most valuable dis- 

 coveries in electricity, has long since passed. 

 Brains are still the chief essential, but modern 

 science has gone in most of its phases beyond 

 the stage of easy discovery of important prin- 

 ciples. No clearer demonstration of the fallacy 

 of the popular belief in the capacity of the 

 man in the street to solve complex problems 

 exists than the report of the Naval Consulta- 

 tion Board in which it is shown that of one 

 hundred and ten thousand suggestions i-eeeived 

 only one in a thousand were even worth con- 

 sidering, and of this one hundred and ten only 

 one was put into production. A few highly 

 trained scientific men, on the other hand, made 

 most of the useful discoveries. To-day scien- 

 tific advance in most fields depends upon the 

 use of equipment of great delicacy and pre- 

 cision, and unfortunately only too often of 

 very high cost. The time calls, therefore, for 

 the organization and classification of research 

 problems and a higher degree of collaboration 

 between scientists than has ever been had be- 

 fore, and it is characteristic of that vision 

 Avhieh has so often been a quality of Harvard 

 thought and action that we are gathered to- 

 gether to celebrate the opening of a laboratory 

 devoted to investigation in a field of science 

 but newly set aside, that of biophysics. The 

 name is new, though the science itself is not. 

 When the professor of anatomy in the Univer- 

 sity of Bologna first used frogs' legs as a gal- 

 vanometer to reveal the presence of electric 

 currents, he was studying biophysics, even if 

 in a somewhat elementary form. In our own 

 times this new field for research has been 

 sequestered from the disciplines of biology and 

 physics as a special region, possibly because 

 the knowledge of the chemistry and the physics 

 of the human body has reached a point in its 

 advance at which there is a little slowing-up 

 in the rate of important discovery. In sxTch a 

 dilemma a shrewd scientist does not keep up a 

 frontal attack, but quickly shifts to a slightly 

 different approach to the problem. Thus, by 

 the combination of the technical methods of 

 physics and of chemistry in the study of living 

 matter there is promise of an ample yield of 

 valuable knowledge within the next few years 

 and of a material advance which may possibly 



again illuminate the purely physical and chem- 

 ical methods of attack on the secrets of life 

 and in consequence lead to still further achieve- 

 ments in those fundamental sciences. Illustra- 

 tions of the fertilizing value of this method of 

 shifting the line of approach can be culled 

 from the lives of many successful investigators. 

 Pasteur is said to have started early in his life 

 on the study of tuberculosis, but to have 

 dropped it quickly when he found that he could 

 make no headway with the technique then in 

 use. If he had persisted, his name would not 

 be known to-day. Paul Ehrlich spent several 

 years investigating the problem of cancer, but 

 as soon as he found that progress was slow 

 and far-reaching results were doubtful, he 

 quickly shifted to the more profitable field of 

 an attack on parasitic diseases by means of 

 chemical compounds, and there achieved a great 

 and deserved success. 



As it is one of the marks of genius to over- 

 come obstacles with the least possible waste of 

 energy, so the fact that this special field of 

 biophysics has been selected for a concentrated 

 attack affords an admirable criterion for the 

 intelligence of those controlling the funds for 

 cancer research in Boston. The world will 

 profit by the investigations which in the future 

 will be made in this laboratory, for in contrast 

 to the worker of the older days, who so often 

 concealed the results of his studies in order 

 that he might reap some benefit from them, the 

 modern scientist gives freely and at once to 

 the public everything he achieves. He does not 

 conceal or patent a valuable discovery which 

 would in any way relieve human suffering. 



The true investigator's chief stimulus is the 

 love for his science and ambition for his insti- 

 tute; and the responsibility imposed bj' the 

 great opportunities at his disposal will be, if 

 he is the right sort, one of the strongest forces 

 in sustaining the arduous labor of research. 

 This concentration of responsibility and the 

 development of intellectual power and leader- 

 ship as problem after problem is solved is an 

 important factor in the success of a truly scien- 

 tific institute, a factor the psychology of wliich 

 has often been overlooked by those administra- 

 tors v/ho wish to impose the regulations of the 

 machine shop in order to obtain quantity pro- 

 duction in science. 



