The Nurture of Creative Science and the Men who Make It

摘要

This report describes the development of work that began as an investigation of photosynthesis and that continues in this direction, but which has as a new product some entirely strngly results. Photosynthesis, the process upon which all life on earth today is ultimately dependent, achieves the conversion of electromagnetic energy from the sun into chemical energy in the form of plant material by the reduction of CO{sub 2} from the atmosphere with the liberation of O{sub 2} to the atmosphere. It has been possible to describe in some detail the way in which the plant accomplishes the reduction of carbon dioxide, using radioactive carbon as a tracer. The status of the present knowledge, and how they attained it, together with some prospectus of the future and what we can look forward to, is the principal theme of this discussion.