The AMERICAS CHEMIC4L SOCIETY had 3389 members
. . , It had recently lost by death four of the most internationally promi-
nent chemists of the day-all honorary members: M . Berthelot, France; D. Mendeleef, Russia; Henri Moissan, France; Sir William H. Perkin, England. .A4 few days before, a t the Council Meeting, December 30, 1907, the report of the Sub-committee on an Industrial Journal was unanimously adopted. The main points of this report read: The Society shall undertake the publication of an industrial journal . The j r s t ~
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the writer alone shall be responsible. to apklied chemistrp including applted food
cturing plants, equipment, and large ap-
Revzem of partzcular zndustries. Quotattons from and sjnopses of articles of interest an current literature. ( I ) Reviews showing the progress in industries and industrial processes. ( m ) Tar$ changes, importation rulings, governmental regulations, etc., as they afect chemical industrj. (1)
(k)
Eight Years Later, in 7976 At the meeting of the XCS Board of Directors, September 27,
policy which would make the Journal known both a t home 1916, Milton C. M’hitaker, part-time editor of the JOURNAL and abroad as the authoritative representative of the views, OF I ~ D U S T RAND IAL ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY for six years, aims, and sphere of influence of the chemical profession in submitted his resignation because of pressure of his industrial America. duties. At the request of the Advertising Committee, which b ”The news gathering facilities of the Journal should be dewas considering the question of future business arrangements veloped a t once, by providing staff reporters to cover all techof the journal, Dr. Whitaker prepared a full report and recom- nical and engineering society and convention meetings. mendations to the board, which was adopted in principle. b “Competent staff writers should be provided to investigate Pertinent features were: and report upon important plant, process, and equipment b “The Journal should occupy a commanding position among improvements. The Journal should publish each month a t technical publications of this country, instead of being simply least one good illustrated article by such a staff representative, d medium for the publication of original papers of and for describing some of the new plants or processes constantly members of the Society. being developed in this country.” b “The Journal should be in a position to cement and unify Readers of IKDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERIXG CHEMISTRY and other the interests of the chemical profession, to develop and improve Applied Journals of the ACS will recognize immediately in the ethical standards of chemists, to collect and distribute all the program which has been carried out for the ACS Applied knowledge which will make for higher chemical engineering Journals many of Dr. Lt’hitaker’s recommendations, made achievements, to draw us to-not to separate us from-other far in advance of the times. The entire chemical and chemical engineering professions. process industries owe a n incalculable amount to W. D.
b “A comprehensive editorial policy would result from the Richardson, who edited I/EC through its first year; to Dr. selection of a real editor who would devote his entire time to Whitaker; to Charles H. Herty, editor during World War I (1) study of the Society’s problems, (2) consistent editorial and its aftermath; and to Harrison E. Howe, editor for 20 development and discussion of its needs, (3) editorial treatment years until his death in 1943. Their names and their conof questions of public and national interest in which the Society tributions have made a lasting impression on the chemical is concerned, and (4) general development of a n editorial industry and the scientific literature.
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
2
Eminent Scientists Look Ahead to
T h e N e x t Hundred Years”
Food out of Sunshine “Our food, which drives our machine, all comes a t present learn how to speed up plants, to grow faster, and produce from the sunshine and our factories, which produce food, are more food, and produce new varieties.” the plants. I expect that in the next coming century we will steal the secrets of the plants and learn how to make food out of sunshine, most of which is wasted a t present. We may Director of Institute of Muscle Research even learn how to make food out of atomic energy. We will
d& Y?jL?34.9m*
Get Together in Friendly Competition “My great hope is that the leaders of mankind, all leaders, will understand that science has opened entirely new horizons, entirely new roads for expansion and domination. We can dominate nature’s forces. The expansion and domination which we can achieve that way are enormous. “All political domination and expansion is negligible compared to what science can give us if we could only get to-
gethcr and, in a friendly competition, put together our ingenuity and use it to create knowledge and beauty.”
9A w g d President National Academy of Sciences
Large Reserves Yet Untouched “If we survive the next century, and if we are successful in preserving our industrial civilization without becoming robots in the process, then I believe that truly wondrous vistas of our world and of our universe will present themselves in endless sequence. “We may ask what the solution is to some of these problems. Certainly new knowledge in biochemistry will enable us to turn fertility on and off a t will simply, inexpensively, and safely. “We will learn to fulfill our needs for raw materials by utilizing the leanest of substances, ordinary rock, the waters of the seas, and the energy from the sun. “Continued technological progress will enable us to decrease greatly capital costs per unit put out, and thus the acceleration with which industrialization spreads. “As our supplies of oil dwindle in this century and coal in the next, we will shift to nuclear power. The world supply
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of atomic energy is almost inexhaustible. There are large reserves of uranium to start off with, and when these have been consumed, we can, if necessary, obtain uranium from ordinary rock. After that, we have the vast potentialities of thermonuclear power. . . “The unknown factors in the equation are not the potentialities of science and technology. The major unknown, I believe, is whether man can devise the moral, the social, and the political means of living with man quickly enough befort. it is too late.”
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Professor of Geochemistry California Institute of Technology
Chemists Will Play an Important Role “I would like to pose a question very seriously. What makes the grass green? “The second one is: How do oysters get their copper out ofsea water in which they live? . “When the chemical kinetics of these and a great many other biological processes are really understood, many new scientific fields will unfold for human benefit. . “In my opinion, the next century will be one in which the chemist, and particularly the biochemist, will play a very important role in scientific and technological progress. “The first question deals with photosynthesis, that process by which plants absorb the energy of sunlight and use it to bring the energy-absorbing chemical reactions between car-
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
bon dioxide and water and a few other materials to form the substances of which plants are made. This process is basic to all living matter. The chemist knows a great deal now about photosynthesis, but much knowledge remains to be acquired. When we do have a complete understanding of these processes, we will be on the threshold of the new radiation chemistry, for photosynthesis is a radiation reaction. “The chemist, aided by the physicist and the chemical engineer, when this knowledge is acquired, will then be able to develop processes of artificial photosynthesis that will be much more efficient (although both physicists and biochemists do not agree with this) than nature has been able to do, and we will not have to rely on the use of delicate
living tissue for producing these substances. water in which he lives, and \ve do know that he has concen“This will open up the possibility of synthesizing all of our trations in his blood-like fluid, which is apparently necessary liquid fuel, such as gasoline, not just by imitating, but by for his life processes. The important thing here is that he outdoing nature. This would be very important in the next is able to take this rather valuable substance for himself and few decades, because within these next few decades, the world concentrate it by a few thousand fold, greater concentration supply of the fossil fuels, petroleum and coal, is going to be- than in the water which surrounds him. gin to be seriously depleted. Hence the work of the bio“How does he do this? As far as I know, n o one knows chemist, who can really begin to get a t the heart of these life the answer. The process is understood in a general sort of a processes, is going to be extremely important in a very prac- way, but the details of the chemical kinetics still remain quite tical sort of way. a bit of a mystery. When that process is understood in its ”This new radiation chemistry is not going to stop with minute detail, then we will be able to improve on nature and sunlight. As the nuclear reactors are almost inevitably I think it very well may be that we will be able to develop coming in for the production of power, gamma neutron radi- processes for tapping the ocean for those types of minerals, ation will be available a t very low cost. I t is almost certain because, for all practical purposes, the ocean is almost infinitr. that this type of radiation, which is entirely out of the range “Hence, if the biochemist can cause these life reactions I of the radiation that comes to us from sunlight, can induce am speaking of, we may well be on the \\.a)- towards solution or catalyze many new chemical reactions that have not of the problems of the supply of our mineral resources.!' yet been discovered, Some of this may be involved in a very practical manner in the producing of liquid fuels that we are going to continue to have to have. , . . “The second question, how do the oysters get their Chancellor copper, is rather interesting. Universit) of Buffalo “We do know that the oyster gets its coppcr from the sea
Many Things Remain Unchanged “Probably we will, before the year 2057, understand in the most meticulous detail all the molecular and atomic events that cause living things to live. \Ye will be able to control metabolism, to curb disease, and to modify heredity along directed pathways. “ I t appears to me quite probable, however, that people a t this time will still eat food. I consider it unlikely that human beings will take on their supply of energy directly as electrical current or as nuclear power. It is widely held that we will one day replace food, the conventional meal, by a pill. Perhaps. But if so, I think it will be a big pill. It will be approximately the size of a present-day meal rolled up into a ball. “We are talking here about a \rorld which ivill be very different, if it exists a t all, from the world that we know today. I think that the dramatic aspect of food one hundred years from now will be that it is so little changed. “One hundred years from today, I believe, people will still supply themselves with energy and with the chemical building blocks for growth by eating the great variety and complexity of chemical compounds which we know as food. “This food will continue to come in the main from green plants, as it does today, from plants that are grown for the purpose by agriculture.
“‘True, the diet !vi11 contain many synthetic compounds, vitamins, and amino acids, Ferhaps. But this, too, will be synthesized in the main starting from plant rcmains rather than starting from limestone itself. , , . “One hundred years from now most of the earth’s surface will be tilled as intensively as is presently done in Japan or present-day Denmark, and to do that we will have to extend our cultivated areas. We will irrigate the deserts with sea water, with Lvater purified from ocean water. LOSSof crops to pests, Ivhich is now significant, \vi11 he long abolished and just be a dim memory. “Agriculture in the year 2057 will cultivate new plants. New plants will be created, and genetic mechanations particularly rich in things that human beings want in edible proteins, and thus we will have plants which I would like to call fat plants and meat beets. Plants will very likely remain very much the same and I discount the possibility of creating a plant which is greatly more capable of trapping the sun’s energy.”
Professor of Biology California Institute of Technology
Spheres of Interest on the Moon “B!7 2057 A . D . several expeditions will have already gone to Mars and Venus and exploratory voyages will have been extended as far as Jupiter and Saturn and the natura! satellites. “Voyages to the moon will have become commonplace. “AS is now going on in Antarctica, the surface of the moon will have been subdivided with spheres of interest by the scientists of the major powers, and a lot of prospecting surveying, tunnelling, and even a limited amount of actual mining operations of precious ores and minerals will be going on. . . . “Transportation costs to the moon and to the planets will have been immensely reduced as a result of the replaceCourtesy of Joseph Seagrams & Sons, lnc.
ment of the early chernically powered rocket ships, b), ships powered with controlled thermonuclear energy. “The direct generation of rocket jets Ivith thermonuclcar energy, that is, by fusion of hydrogen atoms of helium, like the hydrogen bomb, will prove to be found more successful and attractive than all intermediate attempts to utilize fission reactor power in rockrts.“
Director Development Operations Division: Army Ballistic hlissile Agency VOL. 50, NO. 1
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JANUARY 1 9 5 8
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