Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - Research on Campus (1949) [PAGE 3]

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can bring to its staff the most distinguished scientists and scholars of the age. Thus, even if research at Illinois offered no other benefits, its vital role in the educational work of the University would amply justify it. But, as is well known, research brings magnificent returns beyond its influence on education. It is fundamental to our present technological civilization. It is largely responsible for our prosperous farms and bountiful harvests, for our productive industry and our victories over disease. Research in social science, as it yields an understanding of man's complicated relationships with man, may help us to defeat poverty, social disorder, and even war. All this is widely understood. Less well appreciated is the paradox that the research work which has the most important consequences is often that which seems, at the time when it is done, entirely removed from any hope of practical application. The outstanding recent example of this is, of course, atomic energy, which only ten short years ago was a laboratory curiosity pursued by a few long-haired physicists. T h e research which molds tomorrow's society, tomorrow's industry, tomorrow's agriculture, is being done today. But it is being done by scientists without a "practical" goal in mind, men who are striving only to understand the nature of things a little better.

This paradox — that useful practical results are best secured by avoiding research problems which seem "practical" — can be understood with a little thought. A program of "practical" research is undertaken with a specific goal in mind. Since the goal can be visualized, the research program will yield, at best, a result which was already obvious at the beginning. But a research program undertaken to learn what can be learned, with no particular "practical" end in view, may yield unexpected results of the greatest significance to society. T h e University tries to strike a proper balance between "practical" research and the basic research which actually produces most of the important practical results. Both types are needed, the first for short-range problems, the second for major advances. This brief report on a few of the research activities at the University of Illinois is presented in the hope of giving those interested in the University some indication of the scope and nature of that research. T h e pages that follow treat perhaps one out of every hundred research projects now under way on the Illinois campus. No project is fully or adequately treated, and the work of some entire units of the University is left out, because of the limitation of space. Despite these shortcomings, this bulletin presents some idea of what we are doing. LOUIS N. RIDENOUR Chairman, University Research Board

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