The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-11-14
POLICE SEEK SMOOTH CONFIDENCE MAN
|DR GERALD WENDT
 FORUM SPEAKER
Will Deliver Address at the Second Church Sum
 day Night
WORLD WAR VETERAN

One of the leading figures in the rapid development of chemis- try and chemical industry during and since the World war, Dr Gerald Wendt of New York will address the Forum at Second church on Sunday evening, Mo- vember IS at 7:3O o'clock, taking as his subject "If We Must Have War"
 Dr Wendt is lectnrihg under the management of W. ,Colston Leigh, Inc, of New York city.
 The significance of his lecture lies in the epoch making transfor- nation of American industry from pre-war stage of producing raw materials and simple fabricated products into a synthetic era turn ing out new materials and new de- vices. which Nature herself never heard of. Talkies and television. electric refrigeration, dry ice, ray on and bakelite, poison gas high explosives and airplanes are few of the inventions which will them- seem old-fashioned in few years It Is hard to keep up with the ad- vance of science to-day.
 Dr Wendt is one of the out standing figures in the new syn thetic age. Like so many other university professors he left his researches on the atom and the electrom at the University of Chi cago when this country entered the World war and as captain in the Chemical Warfare Service took a leading part in the development of new toxic gases as well as in the design of the gas mask. After. the war he took charge of scientific research for the Standard Oil com pany of Indiana and later was the first director of the Battelle Me- morial Institute for Industrial Re- search at Columbus, Ohio. Return ing to university work he was ap- pointed dean of the School of Chemistry and Physics at the Pennsylvania State College and was soon promoted to the post of assistant to the president in charge of the entire university research program He is now president of a manufacturing corporation in New York.
 His versatility and leadership in so many aspects of science, indus- try and education have made him a frequent contributor to the mag agines. An article of his on the effect of new construction materials such as non-corroding steel, on modern architecture appeared in recent issue of the Nations Busi- ness. His book entitled Matter and Energy" has been out about a year.
 Dr Wendt claims that all the present discussion of the machine age among economists and social writers Is already out of date and that the results of the synthetic age will be even more important in their effect on human society. Among the new developments which are already at hand are the glass skyscraper, the steel bunga- low, synthetic textiles for all pur- poses, utilization of farm wastes for industrial purposes dirigible-hotels television newspapers, and synthet. ic, factory-made foods. They viii make the next generation wonder how we managed to live in the present dark ages, and if we must have war the battleship and rifle will be obsolete.
 Dr Wendt was born in Daven- port, Iowa in 1891 and was edu- cated at Harvard and in Paris. He served in the radium research lab oratory of the U. s. Bureau of Mines at Denver and began his teaching career at the Rice Insti- tute in Houston, Texas. He or- ganized and was the first director of the Institute of Chemistry. He Is editor-in-chief of Chemical Re- views. published by the American Chemical society.