THROUGH A SCIENTIST'S EYES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23002, 3 October 1936, Page 18

THROUGH A SCIENTIST'S EYES

OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPE

By 0. H, Frankel

m. Perhaps the most striking impression the research worker gains on a visit to Soviet Russia is the extraordinary importance attributed to scientific research, and in particular to research in agriculture and its basic sciences. Science stands in the forefront of interest, not only with the Government, but with the people at large. This enthusiasm has led to a mushroom development of agricultural research all over the Soviet Union. But evidently the period of consolidation has set in. Everywhere can be seen signs of reorganisation. Thus it would be a grave mistake to judge Russian research institutions and research activities without being vividlly conscious of the transitory nature of all that can be seen now, of the rapidity,of the development, and of the enormous personal and material difficulties which had and have to be overcome in this process. Research in Russia is a concentric, centralised effort. Just as the new industrial development' does not rely merely on local or individual initiative, so research activities in general are conceived and planned by a central authority. This does not mean to imply that the work of the many hundreds of stations is bureaucratically directed from a central office. It means that research over the whole of the vast' area of the Union is designed to form one organic structure and thereby to encompass all problems of agriculture, and to make the most efficient use of the resources of knowledge, personnel, and equipment. An individual institution is therefore not an isolated unit, but an important link in a chain. The research worker is not tied down to his own narrow confines, but is vitally connected with a wide range of related work; and the leading men in each branch have a singular opportunity for influencing the work of their whole scientific community, which in turn has the benefit of this stimulating contact. But centralisation is not confined to questions of organisation. In its most important aspect it extends to the planning of the work itself. Nowhere has it been possible to conceive research problems comparable in magnitude with those which have been attacked in Soviet Russia. In the field of plant research, the Russians have amassed the most complete collections of varieties of cultivated plants. Collection without classification on morphological, physiological, geographical, ecological, and genetic lines would be futile; but through the concerted effort of hundreds of workers at stations dispersed all over the Union this task has been admirably accomplished for a large number of crops. Now plant breeders, again in a nation-wide effort, are endeavouring to reap the benefit of this work in combining the most favourable characteristics in new varieties.

The facilities for research in general are surprisingly good. Ample laboratory space is available in office buildings, former palaces and country houses of the nobility. Experimental areas are plentiful. The equipment in many of the laboratories I saw is vastly superior, in quantity and in quality, to anything available in New Zealand or in Great Britain. The number of workers is staggering. In Leningrad alone there are more than 600 trained botanists and 400 zoologists. The university institutions in Leningrad number 60,000 students, those of the whole Soviet Union, more than 400,000. These are absorbed immediately on leaving the university. All students receive a monthly payment of 100 roubles, just sufficient for subsistence; but, I am told, they find no difficulty in earning a little extra money. On taking their degree, those who are taking up research become “ aspirants ” or postgraduate students, at a salary of 250-300 roubles, and after several years’ research work they become assistants. I am told that research institutions could utilise far greater numbers of workers than they are able to obtain from the universities. Research workers have salaries which seem to range up to 2000 roubles and more. The higher salaries are derived from the system of multiple employment for senior workers. The standard of living naturally is bound up with that of the rest of the community. But the Russian research worker, as the Russian in general, seems to be singularly detached from those acquisitive considerations which are so natural to our way of thinking. The question arises whether under the system of organised large-scale research there is sufficient scope for the individual worker to develop individual ideas on his own individual lines, or whether he is bound to submerge in a treadmill of routine and mechanised wholesale work. This question necessarily arises from a comparison of the Russian research organisation with that prevailing in Great Britain with its extreme individualisation. It seems that the present enthusiasm for coordination, for the submerging of the individual in the “ collective,” is deeply connected with the present ideas of the Russian people as a whole; and that with a fuller return of a sense of balance for the respective values of individual and social factors this is bound to be reflected in the scientific life. There certainly is no European country which provides an equal chance for the development of scientific work. No doubt the distinguished worker receives every opportunity in the way of technical and scientific assistance. But looking at the place of the junior worker, it would appear as though sometimes he might not get a fair chance for individual development. And no research institution can afford to waste the driving power which lies in the individual work of its youngest members.

There is probably no other country where the essential connection between fundamental and applied science is more fully realised and where facilities for and interest in fundamental research are as great as in the Soviet Union. Naturally it is particularly the sciences which are fundamental to economically important applied sciences that receive strongest support. Thus the science of heredity has found a new world centre in Russia, and one may safely claim that it is to the United States and to Soviet Russia that one may chiefly look for further progress in this field. There are institutions which are entirely devoted to fundamental research, such as the institutes attached to the Academy of Science and to the universities. Others are chiefly devoted to economic problems, but even these support and encourage a large amount of fundamental work. The obvious question arises: “ Why is the Soviet so keen on research.

and In particular on fundamental research? ” The reasons are many —economic, psychologic and philosophic. Russia is a country of enormous dimensions, with vast k but largely undeveloped resources in nearly every field, a scanty popula-. tion with low standards of living, but rapidly increasing in numbers and in requirements. It is the considered policy of the Soviet Union to raise the level of the material ’ and of the intellectual life of its people, and to do this as far as possible by developing its own resources. Now this huge enterprise, the vastest on which mankind ever has embarked, cannot be run on haphazard lines of trial and error. Planning in these circumstances becomes an economic necessity. Novelty, urgency and scope of the task in hand called for a lead from science. Experiment was transferred from the economic field into the laboratory.. .. Scientific research received an immense stimulus from the urgent necessity of discovering sources of supply, and of building up new r industries, primary as well as secondary. For example, Russia cannot grow rubber trees, but it can grow potatoes. Thus synthetic rubber is made from alcohol, but about 50 per cent, of natural rubber must be blended to it to give a satisfactory product. Expeditions were sent out to various parts of the Union to find rubber plants suitable for cultivation within its. borders. A number of these were found. Now specialists were engaged in working out methods of cultivation and manufacture, and in • organising large-scale production. At the same time the plant breeder is endeavouring to improve the collected strains, evidence of which I saw at a station near Leningrad. Another example: The Government attempts to populate the northern regions in order to build up a new agricultural centre which would make Russia less dependent on the production in the agricultural south, with ita periodical disastrous droughts. It is not enough that the plant breeders get busy and produce frost-resistant crops. The cultivators themselves have to live under abnormal climatic and dietary conditions. Thus the bio-chemist is charged to survey the vitamin supply contained in the foodstuffs which can be raised in these regions, in order to obviate any possible vitamin deficiency. A large proportion of the fundamental research work aims to assist and facilitate the economic work. Russian conditions are peculiar in many ways, so that results achieved elsewhere are not necessarily applicable. But there is another and deeper reason for the keenness on research and scientific activities, a reason which can only be understood when one endeavours to follow the trend of Soviet ideas. Knowledge in any form is treated with almost religious fervour. Any enterprise likely to increase knowledge can be certain to receive enthusiastic support from the people as well as from the Government. Added to this is a very noticeable sense of national pride. In the past, I believe, Russians were intent on demonstrating that they could do as well as the rest of the world. Now their ambition is to surpass it, both for the sake of national and Communist honour. And while they realise that in more materialistic fields it may still be a long time before their aim is achieved, in the field of science they feel able to take their place even now with the foremost among the nations. What struck me particularly In conversation 'with Russian scientists was their extreme''keenness, their almost juvenile enthusiasm. To them in a way science is not merely a profession, not a means of earning one’s livelihood, not even of serving the community or any abstract idea; to them it is as well a continuous adventure. I felt that this atmosphere, when blended with mature experience and criticism, is bound to produce outstanding results.