Evening star., 1925-04-30
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL y. COLLINS.

The National Academy of Sciences
held its annual meeting this week in
its new building, dedicated one year
ago. News columns have related the
general story of the Learned discus
sionS comprising the program. but
who amongst the readers have been
able to appreciate the humiliating
consciousness of a layman sitting
under the impressive influence of one
of the ultratechnical lectures and
discovering that he no longer under
stands plain English when 1t comes
so simply from the lips of the mod :
ern scientist?
Higher mathematics and the phrase
ology of the laboratory there fit
from tongue to tongue as glibly as
does the vernacular of the street in
the average group of men or women.
Even the college graduate of 90 or
30 years past (unless he too, is a
disciple of higher learning or has
kept up in science as thoroughly as
in base ball scores) finds it we'll to
hold his counsel and look wise in
silence while electrons are being an
alyzed and their angles of incidence
and reflection and secondary off
shoots are being explained by win
ners of the Nobel prize or other
marks of distinction. The doctors
talk of chemical or Spectroscopic in
dicationS of stars whose light has
been travelling toward earth at a
speed of $4,000 miles per second for
millions of years and has just arrived.
Then, with equal gravity, they listen
to some vivisectionist telling of his
experiments with vitaminS upon mice
and guinea pigs. They discuss po-
lariZation of sugar and the slides of
the Culebra Cut
When the National Academy of
Sciences was organized and incor-
porated, in 1863, what did it's learned
men know about vitamins, or cleo
irons, or the radio, or radium, or the
influences of sun spots, or the weigh
ing of stars, or taking the tempera-
lures of unseen worlds? They had
never seen photograph of the
heavens, nor conceived of the min
iature universe in each electron, with
its central sun and its revolving
planets, relatively as far from their
sun as the earth is from Old Sol.
What did the incorporators of the
National Academy of Sciences know
of chemical warfare, with its poison
gases capable of annihilating regi-
ments in minute, or of airplanes
which could span a continent be-
tween dawn and dark, or of the syn
thetic coal tar dyes and explosives,
or of nitrogenous fertilizer seized
from passing breezes to enrich the
fields of farmers and feed armies and
nations? Yet because President
Abraham Lincoln felt the need of
exact science in defense of the Union,
Congress turned aside from it's enor-
nous military problems long enough
to incorporate so of the leading
scholars of that day and constitute
them official scientific advisers of
the Government"
subsequently, the limit of so was
removed by Congress so that the
membership has about doubled. But
to be chosen as worthy of belonging
to the National Academy of Sciences
is recognized as equivalent to mem
bership in the Academy of France or
the Royal Society of England and is
the highest mark of distinction in
learning possible in America.
X X X
There were scientists connected
with the Government prior to the
formation of the National Academy
The idea of the usefulness of science
in Government affairs was prominent
in the minds of George Washington,
Thomas jefferson, Benjamin Franklin
and John Adams, although practical
science had not developed in their
days into the importance it ranks
today. In 1851 Prof. Alexander Dallas
Bache, retiring president of. the
American Association for the 'Ad-
vancement of Science, in his farewell
address to that organization, said:
II would throw out for your con-
sideration some reasons which induce
me to believe that an institution of
science, supplementary to existing
ones, is much needed in our country