Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/452

448 some other compound with a much longer name but with no higher destiny than to fill a place in Beilstein.

So also in physical chemistry. A careful, painstaking investigation of some of our already established industrial processes with a view to determining the maximum yield at the minimum cost is of the greatest educational value. In other words, a problem for research may have a distinctly practical bearing without being any the less a study in pure science, or without having thereby an inferior educational value.

In other problems we have noted, the solution largely depends upon the process, not the reaction. This demands the chemical engineer, a man who combines a broad knowledge of general chemistry with the essentials of mechanical engineering. He must be well schooled in the economics of chemistry; have a knowledge of the strength and chemical resistance of materials; be able to design and operate the mechanical means for carrying out on a commercial scale the reactions discovered, and duplicating the conditions already determined.

With men whose foundations are thus broadly and deeply laid, anxious to enter the industrial arena, and with a generous appreciation of the scientific man on the part of the manufacturer, coupled with a willingness to grant him an adequate return on the money invested in such an education, the problems in technical chemistry of the present must rapidly become the achievements of the past.