50 Years Ago

It should not be deduced from this that, his scientific training and proclivities apart, the good scientist of to-day is ignorant about or, even worse, unaware of, other branches of man's culture. In fact, the contrary is true; indeed, so far as the community of scientists is concerned, the so-called 'two cultures' (fashionably ascribed to C. P. Snow) scarcely exist. Many scientists are well read outside their own discipline, sometimes still within the ambit of science, but more often well beyond it — in philosophy, history, art, music, the theatre, literature, in fact, in the humanities generally. (Good scientists seldom make good politicians, which is probably understandable.) ... In short, it is high time that the general opinion, still very extant, that the man of science is so wrapped up in his scientific literature and so confined to his laboratory that, apart from his calling, he is culturally unbalanced, be challenged. Indeed, the shoe is on the other foot; it is the student of, and savant among, the humanities, art, music and non-scientific literature (especially fiction) who are — and are often proud to admit they are — quite ignorant of science and its now 'jet-propelled' progress.

From Nature 5 August 1961

100 Years Ago

'The Birmingham meeting of the British Medical Association' — According to Dr. Provan Cathcart, the quality, and not the quantity, of the protein is the important matter physiologically, for the nearer the composition as regards the constituent amino-acids approaches that of the tissue-protein of the animal being fed, the less will there be of nitrogenous waste from that animal. Thus dogs wasted less nitrogen when fed on dog-flesh than on any other kind of protein.

From Nature 3 August 1911