Abstract
AN address delivered by Mr. W. R. Whitney at the twentieth anniversary of Clark University, and reprinted from the Journal of the American Chemical Society in two recent numbers of the Chemical News, contains many suggestive and valuable passages, expressed with characteristic forccfulness. As the author is himself at the head of a staff of eighty investigators, vhe is well qualified to speak on the “Organisation of Industrial Research.” In his view the fundamental problem is to secure men who are endowed with the essential qualities of optimistic activity and knowledge; the former he regards as of supreme importance, in view of the fact that general laws usually indicate the impossibility of a process rather than the specific conditions under which success may be achieved. Fortunately this quality can be imparted, as has been proved again and again, by the establishment of “schools” of research, many of which have become world-wide in their operation; fortunately, also, it is possible by suitable organisation to utilise the labours of those who are not so endowed to promote the achievement of the ideals conceived by the few who are; and in such an organisation it is urged that the output should be not merely proportional to the number employed, but to some higher exponential function. In such a complex scheme it is not thought to be possible to reward each investigator by royalty or by any such direct payment for his success in making discoveries of definite commercial value, on one hand because his success is only in part due to his own efforts, and on the other hand because each investigator must be freely available for carrying on lines of work in which success of this kind is not likely to ensue.
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The Organisation of Industrial Research . Nature 83, 46–47 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/083046a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/083046a0