Problems of Survival: A Lecture by Harrison Brown, Professor of Geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Delivered at Northrop Memorial Auditorium, Minneap

Excerpt from Problems of Survival: A Lecture by Harrison Brown, Professor of Geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Delivered at Northrop Memorial Auditorium, Minneapolis, on March 9, 1958 That we face far greater problems than building a bigger and better satellite is well understood by our speaker today. During the war, in a responsible position having to do with the produc tion of fuel for atomic bombs, he was one of those who began to wonder about the consequences of the systematic application of science to warfare. After the war he was active both in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and in Chicago as one of the young scientists spearheading the movement to create public understanding of the problems which face humanity. In addition to several books which he has written - The Challenge of Man's F uture, Must Destruction Be Our Destiny?, and a volume, The Next Hundred Years, of which he was a joint author - he has contributed articles to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Saturday Review. He has made important contributions to pure science - the kind which has no apparent practical importance but, because of its fundamental nature, in the long run usually turns out to be the most practical of all. For example, he has been interested in the composition and the origin of meteorites. This does not appear to have any practical importance today - unless, of course, one buys and sells meteorites. The American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded him their prize for the outstanding research paper of 1946. The American Chemical Society honored him in 1952 for his work in pure chemistry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.