Abstract
MR. ANDREW MELLON, the newly appointed American Ambassador in London, has a claim to fame in relation to the promotion of scientific research which has escaped recognition in announcements of his appointment. He and his brother, Richard B. Mellon, gave their name and a generous benefaction to the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in the University of Pittsburgh. Of the original benefaction of £100,000, half was used to provide the permanent building accommodating 70 research workers, £12,000 for equipment and apparatus, £4000 for the chemical library, and £8000 a year for at least five years for maintenance. The objects of the Institute are stated to be: “The increase of useful knowledge through the application of contemporary science to industrial processes, the promotion of American industry, and providing opportunities for the training of men for high industrial appointments, and, in addition to this, the training of men in advanced chemical engineering and industrial chemistry for specific industries”. The principles on which the work of the Institute was based were enunciated by the first director, Prof. Robert Kennedy Duncan, and were explained for English readers in Educational Pamphlet No. 30, entitled “An Experiment in Industrial Research”, by T. LI. Humberstone, published by the Board of Education in 1915. It is a tribute to the wisdom of the founders of the Mellon Institute, and the essential soundness of the principles on which the Institute is based, that the Liberal party in an officia statement of policy recently published has urged the establishment in Great Britain of an institute on similar lines.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. Nature 129, 571 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129571b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129571b0