The position and prospects of chemical research in Great Britain : presidential address delivered at the Annual General Meeting of the Chemical Society, March 22nd, 1907 / by Raphael Meldola.

  • Meldola, Raphael, 1849-1915.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The position and prospects of chemical research in Great Britain : presidential address delivered at the Annual General Meeting of the Chemical Society, March 22nd, 1907 / by Raphael Meldola. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    selection from the chemical staffs of these institutions, to relieve these men from all teaching, and to subsidise them to the same extent for carrying on original work. I venture to think that both science and industry would gain by the change. It is sometimes stated that it was never contemplated that re- search should be carried on in these institutions—that this was the duty of the higher educational establishments. So it is the duty of the higher educational establishments, but the very fact that these are enabled to discharge their duty in a most imperfect way should have stimulated the newer institutions to make every effort to redeem our credit by making adequate provision for re- search. I will not venture to intrude my opinions concerning the vitalising influence of research upon other scientific subjects, but with regard to our own I have not the least hesitation in declaring the belief that a school of chemistry which is not also a centre of research is bound to degenerate and to become a mere cramming establishment not wox*th the cost of the maintenance. It is easy enough to follow the actual course of the degeneration process in such an institution. The teacher, who may be a man of real ability and who has entered with the hope of finding time and opportunities for research, finds himself, sooner or later, in the position of a chemical schoolmaster. The predominance of the business influence in the institution not only leads, as I have already indicated, to the lowering of the level -of the instruction and to his own consequent degeneration, but he is, as a further consequence, so overweighted with business and administrative work that these, supex*added to his teaching duties, leave him neither time nor energy for original wox'k. The spirit of research within him is strangled by officialism and his teaching faculties deadened by the monotonous toil of the annually recurring drudgex-y of roxxtine teaching. He has not even time to educate himself by keeping in touch with the progx'ess of his subject, and one of two things must happen; if he x'enxains at his work his research faculty is lost to the country and his teaching becomes less and less efficient as he falls more and more behind the actual state of knowledge—he undergoes submergence. Ox*, as the other alternative, he abandons the career at the first opportunity and is x*eplaced by another teacher who undergoes the same px*ocess of submergence, or, what is more generally the case, the good teacher is replaced by an inferior one because the reputation of the institu- tion as a centre of research is not such as to attract the highest class of teacher. The scale of remuneration also does not enable these institutions to command the services of the best teachers, although I do not