Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Addresses from Inauguration of Noyes [PAGE 30]

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salts. The supply is far too small to meet

the d e m a n d , and ill view of the i m p o r t a n c e

of the subject, this condition, unless improved, presents a distinct menace to our lucational and economic development. A second significant fact is that with the exception of two or three men working under particularly favorable special conditions, the productiveness of our research men is by no means commensurate with the output of an equal number of men in Germany. An impartial scrutiny of the situation shows unmistakably serious defects in our American conditions which must be removed if chemical research is to flourish here as abroad and if able men are to be attracted in sufficient numbers to a life devoted to research and research instruction. Contrasting the conditions in German universities with ours, we find the American professor, as a rule, overburdened with an excessive amount of routine work, consisting of lecturing, laboratory instruction and administrative duties. Some teaching must be considered as essential for the welfare of the investigator: in presenting his subject before a critical student body, he is held to an iron logic, he must ever go to the very foundations of our science and, detecting a weak point here, a missing link, a circle proof, a traditional rut there, his mind continually receives ideas for critical work on the very essence of chemistry. But every profound investigation requires a degree o£ abstraction and absorption as great as that demanded for creative art. And for such work the best powers of the brain are

obviously needed: but, after lecturing two

hours or giving laboratory instruction for