"UTTER NONSENSE"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 55, 14 September 1928, Page 9

"UTTER NONSENSE"

HILL'S OWN COMMENT LIFE ALWAYS A SECRET United Service. (Received 14th September, 8 a.m.) LONDON, 13th September. While scientists at the final meeting of the British Association and the wider public are still discussing Dr. Donnan's paper, which described Professor A. V. Hill as being on the eve of discovery of astounding importance regarding the solution of mystery of life itself, Professor Hill was found at a holiday retreat, laughing incredulously at Dr. Donnan's sensational announcement. He said: "Dr. Donnan is an old friend of mine. Some time ago I lent him a paper containing the result of certain of my researches.' He read into what I wrote far more than I, at any rate, would have read." Professor Hill frankly told the interviewer that he had not attempted to discover the secret of life itself, and had no hope of ever discovering it. Life would always remain secret. It had been stated that he was able to make a living coll in his laboratory. This was utter nonsense. His endeavour had been to find how organisation of molecules in the living cell worked. Perhaps he had cloared up certain matters concerning the living cell that formerly were mysteries, but the actual spark of life was beyond our' discovery. At the association meeting, Professor Cathcart, a friend of Professor Hill's, described tho extraordinarily delicate machines which Professor Hill uses in his researches. One small enough to go into a wristlet watch, measures the variation to a millionth part of a degree in the temperature of the nerve of a frog. To protect his delicate machinery from outside interference, Professor Hill has sunk a three-ton concrete slab on a floor of his cellar, yet only Sundays are sufficiently free from outside vibrations for him to conduct his measurements.