Priestley Medal Address
Some aspects of interdisciplinary research Henry Gilman, Iowa State University
I am. deeply appreciative of this high honor by the American Chemical Society. Needless to say the recognition is to be shared with many, but particularly with my students. Much has been said about Joseph Priestley over the years. "In the spirit of Women's Liberation" it may be appropriate to relate an incident perhaps more concerned with his wife Mary Priestley. There was a custom, now grown into a tradition, to add a rose at the graveside of Priestley as part of commemorative ceremonies. A former student of mine related an incident involving her and another lady teacher of chemistry on the occasion of the "Centennial of Chemistry" celebration in 1974 at Pennsylvania State University and at the Northumberland Priestley shrine. The minister on that occasion spoke of Mrs. Priestley as a "woman of an excellent understanding, much improved by reading, and of a temper in the highest degree affectionate, generous, and most helpful." Then at the close of those exercises the group filed past the Priestley graveside and each laid a red rose on it. On the way to the bus to return to Penn State the two chemistry teachers did something which would have greatly pleased Priestley, a nonconformist minister, the truly "Great Dissenter." They had been moved by the minister's gracious remarks and thought to consider that there was an element of injustice here, "for while Joseph's grave was piled high with roses, there were none on Mary's grave." Feeling that she also should be honored, they returned unobtrusively to the graveside and moved their two roses to the grave of Mary Priestley. On this occasion it is appropriate to expand on the increasing influence of Priestley on advanced education as it involves generalism and interdisciplinary research which characterized so much of his attitude and accomplishments. My remarks relate to some educational aspects of graduate training. They reflect, in particular, a growing concern with the desirability of greater breadth, with or without any concomitant change in specialization. Long years ago we required at Iowa State two minors for the Ph.D. degree. One of these was in a department outside of chemistry. The other was designated somewhat loosely as advanced fundamental chemistry, and included advanced courses in the areas of analytical, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. The courses in this chemistry minor did provide breadth and This address was given at the ACS national meeting in New Orleans last week. Research professor at Iowa State University of Science & Technology, Ames, Dr. Gilman received ACS's highest honor "for distinguished services to chemistry" (C&EN, July 12, 1976, page 18).
meaning and they served a highly useful purpose. For my own students I know the courses to have been very helpful. For example, I had a particular research interest in the extraordinarily versatile and useful Grignard reagents. These were used as tools for the preparation of an uncommonly large number and highly varied types of organometallic compounds for systematic and coordinated studies involving correlations of many p. operties and of relative reactivities. It will be recalled that in those days very many of the Ph.D.'s went into industry. And, if I may quote from my advanced treatise: "It is doubtful that any other group of organic compounds combines at the same time an astonishingly high utility in the laboratory with an equally low usefulness in the works." Actually, the only industrial use of the Grignard reagent, at about that time, was for the preparation of selective pleasant smelling compounds (in 1- or 2-lb quantities) for incorporation into some soaps. There was therefore no essential, topical carry-over to industry of what my students had done in their doctoral research. Unquestionably the broad training in graduate chemistry contributed an elasticity in their securing desirable research positions in highly varied industrial posts. The same applied to academic positions, for here the areas of subsequent research were more numerous and much broader by personal selection. The picture has changed somewhat today. However, the desirability for breadth has increased appreciably. For one thing, the need is accentuated by the truly phenomenal growth of the pressing problem areas so familiar to all: energy sources and interconversions; climate alteration; nutrition; health maintenance; genetic engineering; fertility control; increase of natural resource conservation; agricultural production; ecological balance; and other important areas. Added to the numerous interdependent problems is one of special significance, and that is the limitation or shortage of time for the solution of cascading, critical problems. The attack on these important problems calls for a little more generalism in order that the chemist may contribute more effectively to different, and overlapping, areas. An element of semantics is involved and the "specialist" in chemistry of former years could have been a generalist, at a time when the number and variety of subunits were small. From time to time, and more frequently in recent years, there have been numerous proposals to increase the effectiveness, the usefulness, the breadth, and the general cultural content of graduate study and research. These have involved ideas by many including Willard F. Libby and Glenn T. Seaborg. The range of suggestions is wide. As is so often the case in pedagogy, the variations may be modest but significant extensions or amendments with different degrees of emphasis dictated by the March 28, 1977 C&EN 49
changing scene. Some of these under consideration or now "on stream" may be local or national or international. To cite a few, there are the continuing demands to vary the degree of specialization; to change the average time for completion of degree requirements; to increase international cooperation; to expand our organizations, perhaps aiming for a comprehensive worldwide chemical society; and particularly to increase our own awareness and that of the public to the fact that solutions of our problems cannot be effected by competent chemists alone but by skilled teams or groups from numerous sciences and other important disciplines, both at home and abroad. Running through most of the educational developments are three common threads: first of all, the thought that some aspects of breadth and culture are necessary to provide an increasing ability to understand and to cope with the problems of society. This breadth is generally judged to be fostered by basic courses needed to be taken prior to admission to graduate work. Second, the realization that scientists must demonstrate, within and outside the classroom and laboratory, the important relevance of science to society and to public or economic policy. Third, the hope that graduate students in like or disparate areas may be encouraged to meet increasingly among themselves to exchange ideas. There was a time when many felt that the only important individuals in higher education were the professors. Today the exchanges between graduate students, within or outside of a given discipline, have assumed expanding significance for gaining knowledge as well as a broader awareness. There will always be, of course, fruitful interchange of ideas between professor and student. In this connection one inherent limitation of formal course work deserves emphasis. Whatever the academic route, the ability to select, to attack, and to solve significant research problems does not come to any large degree from courses. This raises a consideration of communication. The adequate and proper use of oral and written English is a common concern of both educators and employers. The blame or fault for the substandard English of graduate students is to be shared by many, but professors must help to remedy such inadequacy long before the time comes for writing a thesis. The feeling of frustration on the part of faculty is so intense that some remark that they would be prepared to sacrifice a foreign language requirement in return for demanding satisfactory English from their graduate students. Most of us are aware and chagrined to know that some doctoral students take their English deficiencies into industrial research where external professional assistance is then required since companies are so desirous of obtaining passable competence in oral or written research reports. There is little comfort in knowing that a comparable discouraging situation exists in the satisfactory use of a mother tongue in some other countries where the science is quite good. A relevant and perhaps unique yearning for assistance came from a distinguished foreign scientist. Just after getting my bachelor's degree, I went to the Federal Technical Institute (ETH) in Zurich to do some orienting research with Hermann Staudinger. He spoke no English and my conversational German then was inadequate. After a time I isolated from an aliphatic-diazo reaction an unknown compound; I tried to explain to him the operations leading to the isolation of the compound. When I had done, he stopped his pacing back and forth, turned to me, and shook his head. I then repeated what I had said but spoke more slowly and with greater articulation. He stopped his pacing; turned to me; smiled, and said: "Herr Gilman, ich muss englisch lernen!" I should like to speak on some aspects of what may be the relevant interdisciplinary research. Any definition of this academically significant tool is bound to be both difficult and diffuse. We are here concerned with the interaction of disparate or adjacent disciplines. As Nilles has stated: Interdisciplinary research "implies the joint, coordinated, and continuously integrated research done by experts with different disciplinary backgrounds working together and producing j o i n t . . . results 50
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. . . which are so tightly and thoroughly interwoven that the specific combinations of each researcher tend to be obscured by the joint product. It differs from multidisciplinary research in that the latter can be performed by experts with different disciplinary backgrounds, but who work separately... exploring different aspects of a central issue. Interdisciplinary research, with its implication of continuous integration and refinement about common central issues, is presumably more useful ultimately than multidisciplinary research, provided that the integration actually does occur." Obviously we are dealing with the degree or intensity of integration. In a sense the beginnings of interdisciplinary science extend back to times when there was no formal education. They may have antedated a teacher-disciple arrangement, and have come into being in the very early stages of thinking people. Certainly the attributes of interdisciplinarity such as the almost instinctive curiosity, the searching for causes, the irresistible comparisons of different phenomena in a natural search for explanations and correlations must have arisen very early. Just to retrace one's steps for a relatively short distance, we had in Priestley primarily a dissenting theologian and a liberal, for whom science was initially only an avocation. There are historians who might classify him as an alchemist who helped build a bridge or to show a way to chemistry. As supporting evidence of such classification there is contained in a letter to Benjamin Franklin the remark that he (Priestley) did not entirely "despair of the Philosopher's stone." An interesting comparison can be made with another interdisciplinarian, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) designated by some as a "Renaissance man," who was active about three centuries before Priestley. Leonardo da Vinci after some experiments dismissed the concept of "perpetual motion," but with apparently no reported experiments had a negative attitude to the idea of a "philosopher's stone." Another significant corelationship of these two interdisciplinarians is to be found in the statement of an historian: "Leonardo da Vinci, that versatile genius of Italy, had been convinced back in the 15th century of two substances in air." It is interesting to categorize these two types of interdisciplinarians who embody some essential aspects of scientific research: Priestley for his "experimental pragmatism" and da Vinci for his "inductive speculations." Whatever may have been the early beginnings of interdisciplinary doctoral programs, they are now actively being considered and carried out in a number of colleges and universities, conjointly as an option with the time-honored Ph.D. programs. The growth in academic interdisciplinarity probably will be modest. There are the ever-present delays associated, in part, with the rigid autonomy of departments, and an extra measure of bureaucratic procedures. The more serious academic objections are of an elitist nature. There are inherent difficulties in the way of coming up with suitable projects or research problems of this type; there is currently a paucity of students who wish to work in an interdisciplinary area, and part of this may be due to an unwarranted concern on placement; and then there are the professors who feel they can gain more rapid academic recognition and accomplish equally good research by more conventional, and less so-called glamorous, routes. It appears to be a reasonable generalization at this stage that the limited number of kindred spirits who have been attracted to interdisciplinary programs (as another avenue leading to an advanced degree) are students and professors of high enterprise. They believe that there is an added measure of challenge and promise in working with, and contributing to the solution of, some problems at the interfaces of two or more disciplines. If the vitality of such a program is sustained, there is the risk of debasing the coin by some who should be counseled to pursue other routes to the Ph.D. degree. The ramifications are numerous and involve many combinations such as academic, industrial, governmental; so-called pure and applied sciences; nonmathematical and nonphysical disciplines such as some of the social areas and even the arts. The search for "breadth" by
such a route may well carry with it greater fragmentation and hyphenation of disciplines as some interdisciplinary combinations acquire increased recognition. It is interesting to reflect on how some historically significant events might possibly have been altered had there been a more formal pattern in those early periods of the then unstructured interdisciplinary research arrangements. At an international ACS Centennial symposium on "Historical Perspectives and Current Trends in Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry," held in New York in April 1976, I presented a paper on "Examination and Evaluation of Low Receptivity, by Mentors or Directors, of Research Suggestions Proposed by 'Novices.' " This considered numerous striking instances of a director being more than a little inhospitable to research ideas proposed by less experienced personnel. Among these illustrations are some dramatic episodes where the research suggestions turned out to be very sound and significant. A broad spectrum was covered in the talk by including the graduate student level of experience of such eminent scientists as Linus Pauling and Seaborg. Here there were some warnings to the students against publication, so that the implication was contrary to the well-known maxim of "publish or perish" but could be considered as "publish and perish." Other peripheral illustrations in this latter category may have involved different stages of professional development, concerning Richard Willstatter, and others. We do not say that the situations may have been altered significantly if interdisciplinary research was then in vogue, but the chances are that the warning signals of "publish and perish" may not have been so persistent. In another type of episode involving a doctoral candidate, what turned out to be a truly regrettable situation might have been avoided. In 1892 a young Philadelphian, Herman Fleck, prepared his dissertation in the laboratory of Lothar Meyer at Tubingen; this was published in 1893 in Annalen. Fleck set out purposefully to prepare phenylmagnesium bromide in ether. The altogether simple reaction he used was the slow addition of 1 mole of bromine to 1 mole of diphenylmagnesium to get phenylmagnesium bromide and bromobenzene by a reaction he correctly wrote as: (C 6 H 5 ) 2 Mg + Br 2 - C 6 H 5 MgBr + C 6 H 5 Br However, he concluded after his slow-addition reaction did not apparently give his expected phenylmagnesium bromide, but instead bromobenzene and magnesium bromide, that the course of the reaction was: (C 6 H 5 ) 2 Mg + 2Br 2 — 2C 6 H 5 Br + MgBr 2 He v/rote: "One may assume that the latter reaction took place and that a stable compound corresponding with the formula C 6 H 5 MgBr was not formed." What Fleck did was to first form phenylmagnesium bromide and then destroy it by the addition of bromine to an excess. Actually, therefore, Fleck was the first to prepare in ether an organomagnesium halide seven years before Grignard made his classical and splendid experiments resulting in a highly important group of compounds which later bore his name. It is an interesting and striking example of: "What constitutes discovery?" What Fleck did was to choose a correct experiment for the preparation of phenylmagnesium bromide; he actually prepared this organomagnesium halide in ether which he had set out to do; and yet he assumed that phenylmagnesium bromide was not formed. His serious error was in not stopping the addition of bromine at 1 mole per mole of diphenylmagnesium (which he had postulated as the correct stoichiometry), but went beyond his end point by adding 2 moles of bromine. This error should have been caught at different stages. What may have happened is that the eminent Lothar Meyer gave the young Fleck too free a hand. As I learned subsequently from Fleck, after our much later studies in 1930, there was an unusually cordial arrangement between the busy Lothar Meyer and Fleck. In a sense, Fleck was severely wounded by the kindness of Meyer in not checking the written
experimental data after 1 mole of bromine had been added. The next barrier that might have arrested the error was the acceptance of the paper without apparent adequate refereeing. The editors of Annalen in which the article appeared were scientists of renown. One may venture the guess that they neither read the manuscript nor sent it to a competent referee because they rightly assumed that a paper submitted from the laboratory of the illustrious Lothar Meyer automatically bore his stamp of approval. Interdisciplinary research certainly was not needed to prevent such an outcome, but it might have helped greatIncidentally, it is interesting to reflect on one of the chief and ever-recurring woes of editors concerning submitters' complaints of inadequate refereeing by "one's peers," involving the keen feeling of authors on the "severity and apparent lack of objectivity" by referees and editors. Currently it is probable that the quality of presentation of results will be improved by interdisciplinary research. Of one thing we may be reasonably sure and that is there were no serious limitations then of space for adequate presentation of articles such as the one by Fleck. It brings to mind the time when Marston Bogert, in a protest of severe editorial demands for brevity, showed a special slide prior to a talk before the ACS Organic Division. He prefaced his remarks by saying in essence that what he was about to show was how Lincoln's Gettysburg Address might have been edited had it been submitted for publication to an editor. The slide had the address as given, and running through it were editorial amendments (concerned almost entirely with extreme conciseness). It started by replacing "Four score and seven years ago . . . " with "87 years ago . . . . " My physical posture in reading this talk is due to limited eyesight. I am not gazing into a crystal ball, nor looking into a wishing well. An anecdote concerned with limited vision may be apropos. A number of years ago when in the Soviet Union I was being shown through a multistoried publishing facility in Moscow. With the director and a deputy, we first went to the top floor and the three of us sat around a table where I learned of the functions and facilities on the floors below. Then, as I recall events, there were the customary toasts as we talked about each March 28, 1977 C&EN
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of the floors. As we were about to start the tour, the Armenian cognac helped establish a rapport (or detente, if that word be permissible) and I remarked to my escorts about two heroicsized portraits at either end of the table: "I know that the portrait to my right (which I could make out more clearly) is that of Lenin, but I do not quite place the portrait to my left." With a feeling of cordiality one of them asked: "Who do you think he is?" They urged pleasantly that I make a guess. This I did, having in mind what I had learned that many Russians enjoyed some American authors such as Mark Twain. After further encouragement, aided by my reasoning that this was a publishing house, I hesitatingly suggested relative to the portrait to my left, of a man with a bushy white beard: "He probably is
Longfellow." At first there were smiles, then chuckles, and one of them said to me: "No, no, that is Karl Marx!" In conclusion, we all are undoubtedly well aware of most of the critical problems facing us; on how some of them are inextricably intertwined; on the need for getting greater knowledge of increasingly disparate areas by possible approaches such as interdisciplinary research, which characterized much of Priestley's work and writings; and on the great pressure of time. I am personally quite confident that each of us can help in varying degrees to complete significant studies on national and international problems in reasonable time; and to find a measure of satisfaction and joy in assisting in these worthy efforts.
ACS News Special tapes offered from ACS Centennial Tape recordings of the Division of Physical Chemistry's special ACS Centennial program are now available on audio tape cassettes. Four symposia are offered: Milestones in Physical Chemistry; Evolution of Kinetics; and Structure and Quantum Chemistry, paired with Evolution of Magnetic Resonance. Twenty-five outstanding scientists, including several Nobel Laureates, made presentations at the symposia. The tape cassettes are custom packaged, and printed and bound copies of the slides used by the speakers are included for each set. Milestones in Physical Chemistry features nine speakers: Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, Dr. Linus C. Pauling, Dr. William 0. Baker, Dr. D. Hodgkin, Dr. G. Porter, Dr. Paul J. Flory, Dr. Henry Eyring, Dr. S. W. Benson, and Dr. J. H. Van Vleck. Total listening time for this symposium is nearly eight hours. Included in the printed copies of the more than 300 slides accompanying the tapes are nearly 150 historical photos presented by Seaborg. The price for this symposium is $45 postpaid. Eight speakers are included in the Symposium on Evolution of Kinetics. Total listening time is six hours; about 150 photos, charts, and tables are provided with the tapes. The speakers include Dr. George B. Kistiakowski, Dr. W. A. Noyes Jr., Dr. J. C. Polanyi, Dr. B. S. Rabinovich, Dr. R. A. Marcus, Dr. K. F. Freed, Dr. S. Claesson, and Dr. J. Jortner. The price for this symposium is $35. Two symposia—structure and quantum chemistry, and evolution of magnetic resonance—make up a third set of tapes. Eight speakers are involved: Dr. J. A. Pople, Dr. H. G. Drickamer, Dr. F. H. Stillinger, Dr. R. Zwanzig, Dr. H. S. Gutowsky, Dr. J. S. Waugh, Dr. H. M. McConnell, and Dr. F. A. Bovey. More than 200 photos and other visual materials accompany the tapes, which total six hours of listening time. Price for this symposium is $35. A special price of $85 (includes all postage and shipping charges) has been set for all three sets of tapes: 25 speakers, 52 C&EN March 28, 1977
about 20 hours of listening time, and more than 600 photos, charts, and tables. The tapes can be purchased directly from ACS, Dept. AP, 1155—16th St., N . W , Washington, D.C. 20036.
CAS compound handbook A new handbook containing structure diagrams, names, and other identifying information for more than 40,000 cyclic, acyclic, and cage structures whose names provide the parent index headings under which related substances are grouped in Chemical Abstracts indexes now is available from Chemical Abstracts Service. The "Parent Compound Handbook," which replaces and brings up to date and expands the coverage of the 1960 edition of the Ring Index and its supplements, includes information compiled by CAS over more than half a century. The listing for each compound in the handbook provides a structure diagram showing preferred orientation and nomenclature locants, the name under which the compound is indexed in Chemical Abstracts, its CAS Registry Number and molecular formula, and, in most instances, its Wiswesser Line Notation and a ring analysis of the type used in the CA Index of Ring Systems. This information is contained in a twovolume Parent Compound File, one volume of which is issued in a loose-leaf binder. Six indexes in a separately bound Index of Parent Compounds provide access to the content of the Parent Compound File via name, registry number, ring analysis, ring substructure, molecular formula, and Wiswesser Line Notation. CAS will keep the handbook up to date by issuing supplementary pages for the Parent Compound File on new parent structures encountered in the CAS Chemical Registry System and cumulative indexes to the supplementary material. Supplements will be issued every other month beginning in June 1977. The
handbook's $200 price includes updating service through 1978. A revised Index of Parent Compounds incorporating all supplementary material will be published every two years. For additional information on the "Parent Compound Handbook" contact the Marketing Department, Chemical Abstracts Service, Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
Call for information Vanderbilt University is planning to write a full-length biography of Dr. Roger Adams, discussing his manifold activities in organic chemical research, education, industrial research, service to the U.S. government and to many private institutions, and his influence during a formative period for American science. All information and documents about Adams will be acknowledged, and all material should be sent to Dr. D. Stanley Tarbell, Box 1520, Station B, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. 37203.
Abstractors needed Chemical Abstracts Service needs volunteer abstractors to abstract chemical papers in the Chinese and Korean languages. For information, contact Dr. Russell J. Rowlett Jr., Editor, Chemical Abstracts Service, Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
MAN AND MOLECULES April 1 IMPROVING BODY IMPLANTS Dr. Emanuel Horowitz National Bureau of Standards Each week C&EN announces the "Man and Molecules" program to be released the following Friday. See listings for stations broadcasting in your area (C&EN, April 12, 1976, page 42).
