50 Years Ago

The mathematician of to-day is a much more powerful figure in research than his predecessor of fifty years ago. Indeed, it is fair to say that the mathematician is gradually taking over much of applied physics. This need not worry the physicist, who is moving into chemistry with growing momentum. Nor the chemist, who, with the physicist, is now a key figure in biological research: and what of the biologist? Does he need to worry? The answer is surely no, for he will become more and more a leader in the sociological fields, ergonomics being a case in point.

From Nature 23 February 1963

100 Years Ago

Nutrition Physiology. By Prof. P. G. Stiles — It is not possible to regard the book as a mere addition to the already numerous primers of physiology; it is something beyond this, although it makes no pretensions to being anything profound. It can be read with profit by the junior student, and still more by the senior student, and even the professed physiologist. Old truths are often put in new ways, and so fresh light is shed upon familiar problems ... The book contains the inevitable chapter on alcohol; this is written in a moderate strain, and may, perhaps be viewed with disfavour by the extreme teetotaller because it is not intemperate. As one reads it, one almost feels that its author was writing it because he had to, but was protesting all the time inwardly against the American law which excludes all physiological books from scholastic institutions which do not obey the tyrannical behests of the party in power.

From Nature 20 February 1913