50 Years Ago

Engineers get the rough end of the stick even in countries where they are more esteemed than in ours ... You fire off a rocket and a satellite moves successfully around the world. That is a scientific triumph. On the other hand, if it flops on the launching pad, that is an engineering failure ... It is no accident that among our scientists there is still a cheerful and relaxed attitude to qualifications. Cockcroft is a great physicist, but he has never taken a physics course in his life ... Crick has revolutionized modern biology; but he has had as much formal instruction in biology as he has in Hebrew ... Engineering has ... suffered through the rigidity of its training ... Where the esteem and the rewards appear to be, there able people will go ... Contemporary engineering education does not encourage enough the speculative and rebellious intelligence ... It is rare for engineering students to question everything under heaven or earth in the way that good scientific students will ... If we get our education right ... the place of the engineer in society will become right ... To most sane persons, esteem is more important than pay. If we had a choice most of us, I hope, would prefer to be President of the Royal Society than the most successful pop singer in the world. Lord Snow

From Nature 16 April 1966

100 Years Ago

The old Romans and Greeks, as evidenced by the statues, were evidently gentlemen addicted to shaving, but ... the means of producing soap in those days must have been limited. The only conclusion that one can arrive at is that they must have shaved without soap.

From Nature 13 April 1916 Footnote 1