50 YEARS AGO

...you reveal more than I think you were aware of when writing “a nation using...a minority language cannot escape bilingualism if it desires to attain high standards of scholarship”. If the sentence is understood as referring to the use of minor languages for publishing, it is indisputable; but all too frequently it turns the other way — scholars within the major language groups neglecting the literature outside their own language... To illustrate this point I have made a small survey of world scientific literature... That our Soviet colleagues know more about ‘Western’ literature than the reverse is nothing new, but it is deplorable... That the English and even more the American literature should emerge as the narrowest is scarcely unexpected... It is a waste, and it is also inconsiderate, to publish primary scientific material in a minor language.

From Nature 18 February 1956.

100 YEARS AGO

Dr. H. Charlton Bastian re-expounds his well known biological heresies with a vigour and industry worthy of a better cause. The first heresy is that “archebiosis” is a present occurrence, that living organisms may here and now arise from non-living materials... we are recommended to take an infusion of turnip or fresh beef, to filter this through two layers of the finest Swedish paper, to let a drop fall on a cleaned microscope slip, to put a cover-glass on, to remove excess of fluid with blotting paper, to allow one or more air bubbles to remain in the film, to seal up with melted paraffin wax...to incubate at blood-heat for two to three hours, and to await events. The expected happens — multitudes of living particles appear... While we must stand aloof from Dr. Bastian's heresies, we cannot but admire his dogged support of what seems to us a lost cause. It is something to stand unus contra mundum with no loss of courage or good humour.

From Nature 15 February 1906.