YOUNG SCIENTISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1930, Page 7 (Supplement)

YOUNG SCIENTISTS.

There lias been much evidence to show that advances in science may more reasonably be expected from young men than'from older scientists whose reputations have been made. Each new theory is superseded by still newer ones at such a rapid rate that the older and more conservative find it difficult to keep pace with them. What is radical to the older man is accepted by younger scientist along with those theories which may be called classical. He takes them all on an equal basis. Professor Joel H. Hildebrandt, of the University of California, writes in "The University Chronicle": "It has always been true that a large proportion of the outstanding scientific advances have been made by very young men. Ostwald in his book on great men. has called attention to the fact that Newton had made three of his major contributions, the law of gravitation, the law of the dispersion of light and the integral calculus, before the age of 25 years. "Mayer, Joule and Helmholtz, all made their chief discoveries before the age of thirty. Vesalius had revolutionised anatomy before the aee of twenty-eight. Scheele and Berzelius were great chemists before the age of thirty. The rapid changes now going on mean, I believe, that, to-day more than ever opportunity lies open to the young man. Indeed, many of the most notable advances are being made by men in their twenties and thirties."