Present Program of the National Bureau of Standards

Abstract

The fields of activity of the National Bureau of Standards are physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering. One cannot, of course, sharply define the division between these disciplines and, as a matter of fact, as the fields of biophysics and biochemistry show, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between border regions even when the biological and physical sciences are juxaposed. Thus the National Bureau of Standards is also engaged in activities touching upon the biological and medical sciences. The work in X-rays and natural and artificial radioactiv­ity reveals how inevitably necessary this is while there is considerable activity relating to instrumentation for the biological and medical sciences. For example, Newman, Swerdlow, and Borysko recently developed a new method for microsectioning of biological tissue, and Broida has developed a heart pump and an artificial heart valve. At the same time progress is being made in the important field of synthetic blood plasma.

Dr. Condon, who was born at Alamagordo, New Mexico (or the heart of today’s rocket-experiment country), took his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California in 1926, after which he studied for a year in Göttingen an Munich. Later he taught at Princeton, Minnesota, and Columbia, and was Associate Director or Westinghouse Research Labora­tories from 1937 until 1945, when he became director of the National Bureau of Standards. On October 1, Dr. Condon will take up his new post as Director of Research at Corning Glass Works.