Abstract
A PART altogether from limitations of resources and materials imposed by national needs and the diversion of scientific workers from creative or fundamental work to emergency problems of defence and the like, the impact of war is rarely favourable to scientific advance. War necessities may, and often do, stimulate invention, but they rarely favour, and indeed commonly retard, scientific discovery and the advance of knowledge. Even in such special branches as aviation, the War of 1914–18 actually retarded technical progress, and as has been pointed out in these columns from time to time, warped the development of civil aviation.
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Discovery and Invention in War-Time. Nature 144, 954–955 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144954a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144954a0