The Exploratory Attitude E INDUSTRY chemists have been preoccupied of late W y e a r s with organization techniques: management, communications, program planning, man, job, project evaluation, and others. These techniques ha\-e helped to make a dramatic success of carrying new ideas to commercial fruition. But about the time I began to wonder where the chemist’s chemist came in, I woke up t o the fact that some fine studies were coming out on research creativity. I am going t o talk about the chemist’s chemist as an individual. There has never been so bright a future for dedicated research men in industry, men committed t o research as a way of life and self-fulfillment. This implies that salary and status in the corporation society are largely by-products of devotion and hard work; research must be interpreted t o management through the whole-hearted researcher. Our industry is evolving fast, the ground rules are changing, and we are possibly moving into a fairy story land where our professional dreams tend t o come true if we live as if they were. The best indication is how the shape of things has changed in the last 10 years. Industry has learned to diversify, take bold and foreign ideas in its stride, and trade or publish discoveries. Research that is rather free and exploratory will generate such ideas with a brightening prospect of putting them t o work. More and more, it is good business t o couple, with hard-hitting exploitation, high caliber ideas and discoveries t o exploit. The ones that can’t be commercialized are a t any rate a step toward greatness in our culture. There are things for both management and researchers to do in getting ready for this new era. The natural climate of industrial development is not ideal for free exploratory research. After all, getting a development job done and launched calls for project analysis, subdivision of function, sharply defined objectives, timing, and tight coordination. Exploratory research thrives on more of a green thumb
F. E. Frey has spent a generation in the field of light hydrocarbon chemistry, all but three years with the Phillips Petroleum Co., for which he is now an assistant director of research. Recognized as an outstanding petroleum chemist, Fred Frey probably owes much of his success to an ability to appraise very accurately the probable course of petroleum technology over a period of years and to set the course of his research in that direction. Anything he says, therefore, on the exploratory attitude should bear careful reading. His explorations have not been limited to chemical research. He i s expert at playing and improvising with the Hammond organ, is a wide reader on deep subjects, and a great hand for investigating new places by way of vacations. Back to hydrocarbons, Fred laid the scientific basis for many processes used in the production of aviation gasoline, motor fuel, and synthetic rubber, and was given the second Southwest Award by ACS local sections in the Southwest in recognition of this outstanding work.
November 1955
approach, both over-all and in nurturing individuals. TT7e need both, and also an in-between sort of research that is curiously free if we select ]\hat me do with care. Lodging a few individuals in ivory toner research is now common and of proved worth, but for more thinkers and a wider reach, we look to the main body of research personnel too. In any group of researchers some live in the world of ideas, and some prefer to tackle the jobs in front of them; both contribute. m e can and should develop more of the first, even though it makes administration rather more difficult. Robert Benchley tells how he spent 10 years in a quandary. This happens to quite a few graduate chemists who go into industry. Young chemists emerge from the university with a B.S., A I S . , or Ph.D. and a certain amount of knowledge and good logical sense, but rather underdeveloped in decision making, work planning, and inductive thinking. Back of them are many years’ exposure t o orderly textbooks, and selected experiments that always work. Even Ph.D. thesis research usually stays off thin ice, and probably should. Starting in industry, the chemist is faced with experiments that don’t work, patent literature that sometimes obscures, a need for a big new armament of facts and semifacts. Added to this, military service, families, and crowded schools have meant more cramming and less time t o let his imagination soar and t o savor the mysteries of science. He needs decidedly more finishing education than ever before, after he takes a job. Some of those who set their hats for sales, operations, and the managerial ladder make this choice before they have thrown themselves into research fully enough t o know their abilities. If research is satisfying for the first few years, there are likely to beenough hits with the misses t o generatea hardyoptimism. The joy of exploratory and creative thinking is one of a researcher’s rewards. Einstein in “Mein Keltbild” said, “The most beautiful thing me can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” Maybe the student of college physics is mature enough, when he finishes the course, to go back to chapter one and meditate on the strange parallelism between mass inertia and gravitational pull, or puzzle over the hydrogen spectrum. Some things to encourage the exploratory attitude can be done in industry without dislocating the usual way we operate. Lectures and visits by university professors are stimulating. Encouraging the quiet ones more in group discussion is possible. It is a fine experience for a young researcher to express an idea to others, especially supervisors, and have them fondle it, look a t various facets, and try t o make something of it. Most industry researchers should learn and use a modicum of economics and patent sense but
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The Professional M a n these can be applied a t a later stage in the exploring process. By studying up a narrow subject it is possible to “beat the teacher” in industry, just as in the university. On the experimental side, it is often possible to design a few critical experiments aimed a t fundamental ends and insert them in a group program. It hurts the timetable a little but gives a deeper feel for the job to the whole team. There is no full substitute, however, for setting by 10 or 20% of the time, in or out of office hours, for what V. N. Ipatieff called research problems for the chemist’s chemical soul. For props this can require a pad and pencil, a library, or a laboratory. It can lead to publications and inspiring contacts with university researchers. It will invade the new leisure, but one can still be a good citizen if he pays the price in less T V and night life. Suitable part-time research topics come in several ways. A pet line of research establishes its own guiding light. A new apparatus tool usually opens the door to new things to do. Watching research breakthroughs is one way to spot big and little offshoots, some of which are not too ambitious for the time and facilities available. Senior researchers know there is a time to advise and a time to look away. There are real administrative difficulties if soul research relying on the laboratory is applied widely in a big organization. If administrators are careful about safety but have a permissive attitude otherwise, and researchers want to try it, much can be done in tune with policy considerations. Kow research in chemistry is based after all on a feel for matter. In this respect there is a curious taboo among supervisors. Many of us become too much like Mycroft Holmes, so much more gifted than his brother Sherlock that he solved murder mysteries by power of mind without leaving his armchair. The armchair method works amazingly well, but often experiments tell us something important we weren’t looking for. The question then comes up, can we use it? About one fourth of the money-making projects I have been associated with came about in this way. I know of two discoveries I missed by poor observation. Obviously, the bench chemist is a rather special person. In reading up a subject, there are times when a few hours in the laboratory tell US things that do not get said in the journals. Playing with chemistry in the laboratory exposes one to new impressions and should be good for inductive thinking. Aldous Huxley, the essayist, took volume AND to AUS of the Britannica on a trip to the Apennines and oddly enough came up with nice ideas about Michael Faraday and scientists in general (“A Eight a t Pietramala”). Some composers get musical ideas while the orchestra tunes up. I find Chemical Abstracts stimulating, Perhaps one of the real acolytes of the test tubes is the stockroom boy who has a sink and some cracked ice and spends an afternoon doing diazo coupling with a lot of inviting anilines and phenols. All this adds up to a demanding way of life. I was intrigued by a thoughtful article in the Hamburg Zeit (April 14, 1955) on the implications of the 30-hour week. The author deplored passive and commercialized recreations and the incidence of black Mondays. He proposed “a middle course in favor of a many-sided and professionally thorough education, which reconciles social security and the development of individual capabilities through the use of leisure.” Correspondence concerning this column will be forwsrded promptly if sddreesed to the author, c/o Editor, INDWSTMAL AND ENOINEERINQ CHEMISTRY, 1155--16th S t . , N.W., Washington 6, D. C.
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
Vol. 47, No. 11
