SYMPOSIUM ON "SELECTING THE CHEMIST-ELECT" Tlmt portion of the progrrrm of the Ilinrision of Cheiniral Edncation rrt the Afinneaj~alisnreeting of the American Chemical Society which attractd record uttendance was the symposium on "Selecting the Chemist-Elect" 'held on the afkrnoon oj' September 11, 1929. A discussion of the fundamental training and qualifications of a chemist which industrial organizations consider most important was led by representatives of some of our large industrial concerns, men who, from long experience in employing and directing chemists, LANGMIJIR, ASSOwere well qualified to participate. These were: IRVING cirrte Director of the Research Department, General Electric Company; G . S . RUTHERFORD, Assistant Superintendent oj' Monufacturin~ Development, MARSH, Ilooke~ Ihwthorne Works, Western Electric ComNny; W. JUDSON Electrorhenziml Company; WM. J . HALE,Dow Chemical Comfifny; rind F . W . BLAIR,Procter and Gamble Company. The meeting was c o ~ n r t e d under the able chairmanship nf WM.MCPHERSON.SevernL of the papers are pnhlished herewith. ADDRESS OF IRVING LANGMmR* In these days we have all learned to know the value of mass production. A large part of our progress is due to it, and the universities are to a great extent following the lead of manufacturers in recognizing the value of mass production of students and men with degrees. This has its advantages, for we need all grades of students. We need men who are willing to do analytical and routine work, and such men are going to he needed in large numbers, but the couptry would suffer tremendously if on this account all students were trained in the same way. We need also the superior students. The matter of their training is a problem interesting in itself, and i t is of the utmost importance that it be well thought out in detail and that it be solved. In my opinion an important move in chemical education is to go hack to the high schools and arouse an interest in chemistry among large numbers of boys and girls, particularly among the best of them, for these are the young people who are to supply the superior students for whom we are looking. It will give us a large number of students already interested in chemistry from whom we can choose. The whole trend of science in recent years has been the accumulation of enormous amounts of material, as we see from our publications, and the generalization and compilation of data on old phenomena. From the educational point of view this is bound to have a tremendous effect. It is no longer possible to teach chemisb all that is known of chemistry.
* This is essentially the same address delivered by Dr. Langmuir on the occasion of the dedication of the Francis P. Garvan Chair of Chemical Education at The Johns Hopkins University, October 11,1929, and which is referred to an page 281 of the February, 1930, issue of THISJOURNAL K30
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I t may have been possible fifty or one hundred years ago Lo have a uia11 know through his college course a reasonable proportion of the sum total. This is impossible now. You will have to select subjects out of an enormous amount of material, and certain subjects may be chosen as examples of the whole of chemistry, so that a man will know how to apply to a particular situation principles he has learned in an entirely different field. When one went into chemistry fifty years ago, each branch had a fence around it. Take, for instance, the teaching of qualitative analysis. There was never a doubt about what should be taught in it. It seems to me that sort of thing should be abandoned, especially when we havc to deal with superior students. I have asked a number of men in laboratories, who have been trained as chemists, what criticisms they have to offer in regard to their own college courses, and the consensus of their opinions practically coincides with the estimate I have formed of my own course. What is needed is more fundamental training, more mathematics, more physics, and more fundamental chemistry, less of specific chemical application, less of applied chemistry. The methods are the important thing; the method of thinking, the method of using fundamental knowledge-these are essential. In teaching the application of chemistry and in teaching the method of applying fundamental knowledge, there is no harm in having a few practical subjects to work with, but the emphasis should be laid on the training as to the method of thinking, the mefhod of applying the knowledge rather than on the knowledge itself; in other words, do not teach mere facts, except here and there; do not make that &e main part of the course, but get down to the fundamental methods, stimulate interest and arouse enthusiasm for knowledge, for methods of acquiring knowledge rather than for an accumulation of knowledge. A college has to teach certain subjects; that is a business proposition; there cannot be one teacher or one instructor for all subjects. The work must be divided, but i t seems to me that that should be regarded as a necessary evil and that it should have as little effect on the structure of the course as possible. I remember in my own college work we had a course in assaying; W? had, I think, three afternoons a week for one year in that course and it was obvious that everything that had to do with assaying had to be included in that course. It was not a question of whether the method used in assaying was as good as one that could be taught in quantitative analysis, but the point was that everything that properly came within the textbooks on thc subject of assaying was a part of the course, so that the students should have a well-rounded-out knowledge of assaying. It was the same with the fencing off of analytical chemistry. That is a wonderfully good subject to teach. A man learns a great many useful facts; he gets the feeling of chemical substances. But in learning qualitative
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analysis 11c shonlcl not be permitted to use sloppy melhods that he will not be able to use in quantitative analysis. Courses in qnalitative analysis should be taught in the beginning, but quantitative methods should be taught from the beginning. Why separate the two branches in a way that nobody has ever done except in a chemistry course? Why put nitrogen in and leave out tungsten and numbers of other things that are murh more important than tungsten? Think of what importance the course has to a man; don't give it just because the faculty has assigned an hour lor a course in qualitative analysis and nothing else. Work up a system hy which yon give a man the inethods of thinking, the method of developing his own experimental ability, put the whole thing into a flexible system, and allow the students all the opportunities there are. Let the best man have the chance and arouse an interest in him to go far ahead of every one. It must be recognized that it is impossible to give courses on all the subjects there are. Students are now usually allowed to select very largely the subjects they study. That is highly desirable, hut they certainly should be guided very carefully, for they don't know what is important and are likely to choose the thing that seems interesting and easy. I t is better not to try to give a course complete in itself. Its relation to other subjects must be kept in mind. It seems to me particularly valuable to have some very general courses. I know that the lecture system is much questioned by a great many people who do not believe in getting information in this way. Although lectures partly fail of their responsibility, I rather feel personally that ;hat is learned through certain sorts of lectures is more valuable than information obtained in any other way. I have in mind particularly a course of lectures I attended a t the University of Gottingen. A large number of students took the course. I t was given by Pelix Klein and the subject was mathematics, not any particular branch of mathematics, but all kinds of mathematics. It started with arithmetic, the simple theory of numbers. It went on to Euclidean geometry, algebra, calculus, etc.; what the differential or infinitesimal or integral calculus means, and how each is used. The professor told us about the eight-year old mathematical genius, John Guest; about the internal construction of the adding machine and the multiplying machine, a little about this, a little about that, so that when we got through with that course, we knew something about all branches of mathematics. I t was a course in the philosophy of mathematics. It was very difficult and required a great deal of outside work. It stimulated reading. In order to learn the content of this course for himself, a man would have had to read the whole course of every branch of mathematics. After taking that course, I had a keen interest, which has lasted all my life, in the whole subject of mathematics. Although there are few men who can give courses comparable to Klein's,
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it seems that a good lcacl~crof chemistry should be able to put before the students an idca of what a particular branch of chemistry is; for example, he should so outline a coursc in organic chemistry as to arouse a possible latent interest in organic chemistry, but not necessarily to make the student an organic chemist. If that interest is aroused, a student will be stimulated to study for himself the necessary details. Of course, the sort of lecture that simply gives facts that can be learned from books is worse than useless. A student learns things that will be of no use to him and gets lazy habits of acquiring information. What he needs is to find ont how to find out things for himself, how to look up the literature for information to apply to his problems. The superior student cannot hope to collect facts and data on a large scale, over an entire field, but the plans and methods of science he has got to get in college and not outside. As in the course in mathematics of which I have spoken, so in chemistry the relationship of the different parts of the science should be kept in mind. Why go into one field of chemistry in all its little ramifications, examining all the little parts that should go into an encyclopedia on that subject, and all the time neglecting whole vast fields of science? As regards the necessity of mathematics in the training of the chemist, we have had in this meeting of the American Chemical Society in the announcement of the production of para-hydrogen an object-lesson. The chemist, for the last few years, has needed mathematics. The handwriting is on the wall. I think the whole,future of theoretical chemistry depends on the application of physics and the quantitative theory of mathematics, more so than any man has ever yer' dreamed. Fundamental chemistry will have to depend on the ability of the average man to read and think along the lines of fundamental work. The chemists of ten or fifteen years hence are going to need much more mathematics than we have. Now, students don't like mathematics and many of them cannot absorb mathematics, but they should not be allowed t o go through college thinking that mathematics and fundamental physics are not needed by chemists. They ought t o have every opportunity to realize the importance of such new fields. There are new methods in mathematics that were discovered only a few year sago. Hydrogen might have been separated by any chemist, with no expense, a t any time within the last ten or fifteen years. All he would have needed was some liquid air which he could have purchased in any large city for a few dollars, and if he had had the knowledge, he could have produced para-hydrogen fifty per cent pure. But without the knowledge he never in the wide world could have done so. I suppose it would have been fifty years before para-hydrogen would have been discovered by the use of ordinary methods. Now this is going to rehabilitate the methods of thinking, so that every chemist will begin to reason in terms of technical construction. Even now, methods
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arc different; a student learns urany 01 the new methods in high school, which, a few years ago, would only have been taught under theoretical chemistry. Now things go faster, and we must recognize that this new mathematical development is going to be of an importance in five or six years that i t is diicult t o realize a t present. I have been trying to emphasize throughout this talk the necessity for training in the ability to get information. In our lahoratory we use very few chemists; our work is nearly all physics, and yet we take a good many men who have had chemical training. Dr. Whitney, the director of the laboratory, is a chemist; Dr. Coolidge, assistant associate director, and myself, are both chemists; and yet not one of us has taken chemistry as a part of our regular work. Perhaps what I have to say on this score is not strictly applicable to the purely chemical industries but I have a very strong feeling that industry doesn't want a man trained in the knowledge of the things to which he is to be assigned. We start him on experimental work, and we want him to use his intelligence; we want him to be able to read things correctly, to be able to get his own data, to work out his own methods; he must be able to go down to the library and pick out things for himself. He certainly must know physics and chemistry, and the application of them, a t the time he leaves college. The particular methods that are going t o be used he will learn from other members of the profession; we will see to that. We have our own methods of doing things. He will learn our point of ,view from his associates, and what he learns from them will he far more pertinent to his work than anything he learns a t the university. But we ¬ stop to teach him fundamental chemistry and mathematics and physics. A chemist who does not know mathematics is seriously handicapped. Mathematics is nothing hut a tool from the point of view of achemistor physicist. It does not create new knowledge in itself; you must put into i t essentially what you get out of it. Now an experiment in physics or chemistry is fundamentally complicated. In practically every one, simplifying assumptions are necessary. There are many men who have had courses in mathematics, who, when faced with a practical possibility in physics or chemistry, are unable to make simplifying generalizations because their background in mathematics is so deficient that they are unable to transpose their knowledge of i t t o other fields. Much practice is necessary for that, and a student should get it by watching the experiments of others. A teacher should be able to show his students methods of thought and the student should learn how to correlate data and bring them together. As a conclusion, I would say that the idea of stimulating the originality of the superior student is of the greatest importance. It is not desirable to look for a best course for all. Individuality should be developed in the greatest possible way.
