CHEMICAL RESEARCH

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 146, 18 December 1933, Page 16

CHEMICAL RESEARCH

POSITION AT HOME-

LECTURE BY PROF. MORGAN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) , LONDON, October 31. Professor G. T. Morgan, Director of Chemical Research under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, delivered a lecture before the Institution of Chemical Engineers on "Engineering in the Service of Chemical Research." Professor Morgan, who is ono of the foremost exponents-of tho comparatively new science of high-pressure chemistry, described apparatus which had been , devised 'at the Chemical Research Laboratory, by which experiments could be carried, out under 3000 times atmospheric pressure—namely, a pressure of about 20 tons a square inch. At the, other extreme constituents of coal tars difficult of separation were being obtained at the, laboratory by distillation of the tar 'at very low pressure, "of the. order'of'one-thousand-millionth of an atmosphere. Referring to "the old pre-war days," he said that employers were always greatly obsessed by the idea of engaging German chemists, with a process. Sometimes those processes worked, but sometimes not. Che'mieal engineering for fine chemicals was then at a very low ebb in this country, largely owing to the fact that 80 .per cent, of our dye wares, came from abroad, and of the remaining 20 per cent, of home-made colouring matters many were manufactured from foreign intermediates. "For all industrial applications of chemical science," he remarked, "engineering and chemistry are mutually indispensable, and, so far as this country is.concerned, the advantages of such co-operation are more generally recognised today than they were at the outset of my professional career, but there is room for much improvement. We are still too apt to leave the /work of scientific exploration to our contemporaries in other lands, although the British Empire is endowed with,mineral and organic resources to an extent unsurpassed by any other nation. » "Our opportunities are boundless, but without a closer collaboration between chemisti-y and engineering we cannot render an adequate' account of our stewardship. Unless we take advantage of this favoured position and stimulate to the full the inventive talent of our chemists and , engineers, we must certainly drift into/the position of a navvy nation—hewers of wood and drawers of water for more educated peoples. "In certain respects we were approaching that position in 1914. The World War gave us a temporary respite, but the never-ending economic industrial struggle is still with us,.and in this contest the intimate blend of chemistry and engineering presented by the Institution of Chemical Engineers must take au increasingly important part.'' .