Abstract
Designed to bring industrial research into closer contact with academical research, an eight-day course of lectures and class work was opened in the Department of Physical Chemistry at Cambridge on August 16. The pressure of applications induced the organisers to accommodate 180 rather than the 100 applicants originally contemplated. An unexpectedly high number of representatives came from university colleges, technical colleges and schools. Many officers attended from the research departments of the Ministry of Supply, and some from the Services. The majority were drawn from industrial organisations, headed in by a group of twenty-six from various sections of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd. Prof. Norrish's inaugural lecture on the history of chemistry at Cambridge was followed by eighteen lectures given by him and his staff and devoted in equal numbers to molecular structure, its quantal interpretation, its optical investigation and its bearing on pure liquids and solutions; polymerization, oxidations, explosions, photochemical reactions and nuclear chain processes; the mechanism of friction, wear and lubrication, and the induction of chemical change by impact. The course was characterized by a friendly exchange of difficulties between those attending the school and those responsible for it, and by the variety of new experimental techniques available for trial. The final meeting was attended by the Vice-Chancellor and addressed by Mr. A. V. Alexander, Minister of Defence.
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Summer School in Physical Chemistry at Cambridge. Nature 160, 292 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160292d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160292d0