WHAT SCIENCE HAS DONE

Evening Star, Issue 23129, 1 December 1938, Page 15

WHAT SCIENCE HAS DONE

Science is a queer business. What the scientists call progress often seems to the ordinary man merely a step back in the wrong direction. For instance, last year an American professor, Paul Weiss, of Chicago University, succeeded in putting a salamander in a pretty pickle. In fact, every time the creature tried to walk forward it found itself running backward—like a motor car on an ice-bound steep. This strange phenomenon was achieved by transplanting the salamander’s legs so that they grew the wrong way round on its body. The operation was described as a brilliant success. Then again the prize offered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science went to P. W. Zimmertnann and A. E. Hitchcock, of the Boyce Thompson Institute, who succeeded in making a tobacco plant upside down—with its roots in mid-air. But perhaps the most amazing achievement of all, from the ordinary man’s point of view, was that of turning gold into mercury. We know that the alchemists have spent centuries trying to transmute cheap metals into precious gold. “ But,” asks the ordinary man, “ who wants to turn gold into mercury?” The answer is, “ Scientists do.”