Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

  • Frederick Hopkins
Date:
[1938?]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT AND CHEMICAL THOUGHT A PLEA FOR UNIFICATION In preparing this lecture I have yielded to a tempta- tion excusably felt I think by one who sees near at hand the close of an active career. To compare the present with the past in the field of his own activities, and to advertise the progress he himself has seen, is for such a natural impulse where opportunity is offered. If however I now yield to that impulse it is not without an ulterior aim. No one with adequate knowledge will deny that the subject of biochemistry during recent years has shown itself to be a fertile field, at least for those intent on gathering a harvest of facts. The recruit- ment of labourers to that field has lately grown, and is still growing so fast that the facts garnered seem already overwhelming. In the minds of some at least, the question still arises: What (practical appheations apart) is likely to be the ultimate significance for biological science of these myriad chemical facts ? It is part of my intention to attempt in a very limited and humble way to make some appraisement of this significance. To this end then I may first be allowed to estimate in fewest possible words the essential nature, as it appears to me, of the progress which biochemistry has made since I first had concern with it just fifty years ago. I can of course do no more than illustrate that progress with a few examples, dealing with its kind rather than its extent. I ought perhaps to say. at once that when throughout this lecture I refer to its progress, I shall mean the advances it has made as a branch of fundamental scientific inquiry. Its practical applications in the field of Medicine and elsewhere are to-day not without general recognition. On these I will not dwell on this occasion. OUTLOOK OF THE BIOCHEMIST In my own earliest days all who hoped to apply chemical methods and chemical thought to biological
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