October 1967

(20th year)

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INESCC

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WÈ&ÈL&Î^BfflBk

MARIE CURIE

TREASURES

OF

WORLD ART

Korean altar boy

This unique figure of a Buddhistaltar attendant was carved in Korea

during the late Yi Dynasty (18th-19th) century. Thirty inches highand made of polychrome wood,it is now in the Honolulu Academyof Arts, Hawaii. No other similar

figure, either in Korea or elsewhere,exists today comparable with iteither in size or quality. Suchstatues were placed in pairs oneither side and in front of the

Buddha in provincial temples ofKorea. This one originally held abird in its hands.

Photo © Honolulu Academyof Arts, Hawaii.

2 0CT019B7

Courier Page

OCTOBER 196720TH YEAR

NOW PUBLISHED IN

ELEVEN EDITIONS

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Published monthly by UNESCO

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and Cultural Organization

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Managing EditorsEnglish Edition: Ronald Fenton (Paris)French Edition: Jane Albert Hesse (Paris)Spanish Edition: Arturo Despouey (Paris)Russian Edition: Victor Goliachkov (Paris)German Edition: Hans Rieben (Berne)Arabic Edition: Abdel Moneim El Sawi (Cairo)Japanese Edition: Shin-lchi Hasegawa (Tokyo)Italian Edition: Maria Remiddi (Rome)Hindi Edition: Annapuzha Chandrahasan (Delhi)Tamil Edition: Sri S. Govindarajulu (Madras)Research: Olga Rodel

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34

THE MENACE OF 'EXTINCT' VOLCANOES

By Haroun Tazieff

MARIE CURIE

The life of a woman dedicated to science

THE RAREST, MOST PRECIOUS VITAL FORCE

By Marie Curie

YEARS OF HAPPINESS, WORK AND TRIUMPH

MARIA SKLODOWSKA

THE DREAMER IN WARSAW

By Leopold Infeld

THE WOMAN WE CALLED 'LA PATRONNE'

By Marguerite Perey

RUBEN DARIO

The resurrection of Hispano-American poetry

By Emir Rodriguez Monegal

GREAT MEN, GREAT EVENTS

THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME

A new form of aid for development

ßy Colin Mackenzie

FROM THE UNESCO NEWSROOM

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

TREASURES OF WORLD ART

Korean altar boy

Cover photo

One hundred years ago a woman whowas to become one of the most

illustrious scientists of our century wasborn in Warsaw. Maria Sklodowska, orMarie Curie as the world was to know

her, dedicated her entire life passionatelyand unselfishly to science and aboveall to the completely new science ofradioactivity, of which she was one of

the pioneers (see page 14). The"Unesco Courier" has asked a

distinguished Polish physicist, LeopoldInfeld, and a French woman scientist,Marguerite Perey, who worked forseveral years with Marie Curie, torecount the early life of this womanof genius (page 20) and the closingyears of her work for science (page 23).

Mount Bezimlanyi "explodes". This"extinct" volcano (its name signifies"unnamed") on the KamchatkaPeninsula, to the east of Siberia, wasconsidered unimportant byvolcanologists who focused theirattention on strongly active volcanoesin the region. Suddenly, on March 30,1956, a tremendous explosion blewthe top off Bezimianyi, hurtling debris40 kilometres (25 miles) into the airat a speed of over 1,000 km/h(700 mph) and devastating 1,000 sq.km.(400 sq. miles) of forest. This photowas taken from 45 km. away.

THE MENACE

OF 'EXTINCT'

VOLCANOES

by Haroun Tazieff

In the almost twenty years I have been travelling

around the world trying to get to know something

about the most splendid and violent spectacle that

nature has to offer, I have gradually become

convinced of something that laymen and even

professional geologists and volcanologists usually

ignore, and it fills me with dreadthe prospect,

some day soon, of unheard-of volcanic catastrophes.

4

HAROUN TAZIEFF, Belgian geologist andvolcanologist, is well known to our readers(see the "Unesco Courier", October 1963;

November 1965). He is the author of manyscientific publications and several popularscience books and has produced a numberof prize-winning scientific and documentaryfilms on volcanic eruptions. This text is

taken from a study published in Unesco's

quarterly, "Impact of Science on Society",No 2, 1967 (annual subscription $2,50; 13/-).

You may perhaps imagine that onlythe stupid outbreak of nuclear warcould cause the deaths of a hundred

thousand, five hundred thousand, ora million people within a few minutes,but you would be wrong; wrong, be¬cause, ' as geological evidence hasfinally convinced me, humanity has sofar been fantastically lucky and thecatastrophes of Pompeii and St. Pierrede la Martinique are nothing to whatawaits it.

A loss of thirty thousand, forty

thousand people killed by the blast ofa volcano these were already badenough; but these were small townscompared with the enormous moderncities threatened at closer or longerrange by a volcanic outburst Naplesand Rome, Portland and Seattle, Mexi¬co City, Bandung, Sapporo, Oakland,Catania, Clermont-Ferrand. . .

Yes indeed! Rome, Portland, Cler¬

mont-Ferrand: volcanoes regarded aswell and truly extinct near these citiesare dead only to eyes that cannot orwill not see. Men, as we all know,have short memories. Political or

natural, catastrophes cease to worrythem almost as soon as over, andteach them little. A volcano may beless than a century dormant andpeople almost cease altogether tothink of it as such; all the more so

if a thousand years or more has pas¬sed.

But volcanoes are geologically live:time, for them, is counted not in yearsor even in centuries, but in millenia and

tens of millenia. The thousand-yearsleep that is nothing to them is aneternity to men living under theirshadow the volcanoes of the Massif

Central in France, those of Latium,of the Cascade Range in Oregon, andof California (although the latter hadnumerous, if "not major,, eruptionsthroughout the last century, and evenas recently as 1916 in the case ofLassen Peak).

But Clermont-Ferrand, Rome?. Com¬

pletely forgotten by the inhabitants,the fact remains that only a few mil¬lenia separate us from the last erup¬tions. In the course of their lifetimes,

millions of years long, there must havebeen many lulls, for dozens or evenhundreds of centuries, and there are

really no grounds for supposing thatthe present calm signifies the end ofthe volcano's activity rather than aperiod of repose. Obviously the verylength of these quiet periods is hope¬ful; centuries, hundreds of centuriesmight pass and Clermont-Ferrand,Rome or Seattle not be wiped out.But the interval might be much less.

The two most violent eruptions ofthe twentieth century occurred at appa¬rently extinct volcanoes; the first atthe Katmai volcano in Alaska from

June 6 to 8, 1912, the second at theBezimianyi Sopka in the Kam

chatka peninsula on March 30, 1956.Relatively little was. known about Kat¬mai and its neighbouring volcanoes,but ten years ago it was thought thatthere remained little to learn about

the volcanic chain around ' the Bezi¬

mianyi volcano indeed, Klyuchi, hard¬ly- 50 kilometres away, is one ofthe best-known volcanological obser¬vatories. Nevertheless, and despiteintensive study of the strongly activevolcanoes in the area, no importancewas attached to this insignificant"extinct" cone, its very name, "Unnam¬ed" emphasizing its insignificance.

The explosion of March 30, 1956blew the top off the mountain, hurtlingdebris 40,000 metres into the air, blast¬ing down the forests at its base, andsnapping tree trunks like matchwoodup to 20 kilometres away. As inAlaska forty-four years earlier, no-onewas killed, but only because theseregions are practically uninhabited.What would happen in six months, sixyears or sixty times six years if acataclysm on this scale were to strikeJava or Japan?

In fact such a cataclysm did occur,although fortunately on a smaller

scale, about fifteen years ago in NewGuinea. In this case it was not even

known. that the mountain was a volca¬

no; Mount Lamington, near the easternend of New Guinea, had been regardedas just an ordinary mountain until theday when, on January 16, 1951, a thincolumn of vapour was seen rising fromits summit. The next day slight earthtremors were noticed around the foot

of the mountain. The escapes of gasand the tremors increased during thenext two days, and a small amountof ash was ejected.

On January 20, the eruption had be¬come spectacular; the wreath of ashesreached up over 10,000 metres into thesky and rumblings were heard, some¬times dozens of kilometres away

On Sunday January 21, the volcanowas roaring continuously and at 10.40a.m. it exploded: a fearsome wreathof convoluting clouds of gas, spillingash, lapilli and blocks, shot up to aheight of 15,000 metres in a matterof seconds and formed a huge mush¬room cloud, while a glowing ava¬lanche spread over the ground withthe same terrifying speed. Two hun¬dred and fifty square kilometres of

5

MENACE OF 'EXTINCT' VOLCANOES (Continued)

Rome, Mexico City, Oakland, Seattle, Bandung, Catania,

Sapporo, Clermont-Ferrand... on the waiting list

countryside were laid waste, and 3,000people killed.

I have tried to intimate to readers

my anxiety about supposedly extinctvolcanoes; but there is another, yetmore terrifying menace: the menaceof ignimbrite flows.

There has only been one ignimbriteeruption in historic times. It was rela¬tively moderate. I say relatively be¬cause it nevertheless covered a sur¬

face some 30 kilometres long by 5 kilo¬metres wide with a layer on average100 metres deep, which, if spread overthe whole of Paris would bury it nearly10 metres deep. This was the eruptionwhich created the Valley of TenThousand Smokes in Alaska in 1912

to which I alluded earlier.

The geological history of the earthis, however, full of really colossalignimbrite escapes in which thousandsand tens of thousands of square kilo¬metres have been suddenly engulfedbeneath suffocating clouds of gas andavalanches of incandescent sand.

T

6

HERE are ' a great manysheets of ignimbrites in New Zealand,where they were described for the firsttime some thirty years ago, and thereare also many in the United States andItaly, Japan and the Soviet Union,Kenya, Chad, Sumatra and CentralAmerica, Latin America, Iran andTurkey.

All these were the result of sudden,almost lightning-fast escapes of mag¬ma, supersaturated with gas, which,after forcing open a long fissure, spurt¬ed up and spread out, allowing fordifferences of scale, somewhat like

milk boiling over from a saucepan. Itis almost certain that speeds of over100, perhaps even 300, kilometres anhour were reached, and the very natureof the material spewed out in thisway with droplets of lava, vitreousfragments of exploded bubbles andincandescent fragments of pumicesuspended in the released gas madeit so fluid that it was able to spreadover immense areas, immediately wip¬ing out all life.

As already indicated, the only ignim¬brite eruption known to have occurredin the world in historic times is that

of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.This name was given to the valley byRobert Griggs when, after great effort,he and his team arrived in 1917, fiveyears after the eruption, at the headof the Katmai Pass and discovered the

extraordinary expanse of salmon-pinkand golden sand from which innu¬merable jets of high-pressure steamwere rising, thousands of fumarolescaused partly by the rivers and streamstrapped under the thick sheet of burn¬ing ignimbrite sands, and partly by

the magma gases still imprisoned inthe sands.

Fifty years to the day after the erup¬tion, on June 6, 1962, it was the turnof my friends the geologists Marinelli,Bordet and Mittempergher and myselfto arrive in this fabulous valley: onlythree or four columns of steam still

rose lazily at the top end of the valley,towards Novarupta, the small volcanowhose detonations marked the end

of the cataclysm.

We gazed for a long while at thistawny wilderness, stretching awayastonishingly flat within its ring ofmountains. But behind the wonder

aroused by this austere beauty, behindthe geological interest, behind ourdiscussions of how the ignimbritescame to be there, there lay the inesca¬pable thought that an eruption of thistype might very well occur in the nearfuture, not this time in a desert as inthe Alaskan peninsula or the TibestiMassif of the Sahara, but in some

overpopulated part of the globe forthere are recent ignimbrites throughoutLatium and California, throughout Japanand Indonesia.

This is what I have in mind when

I speak of the possibility, or ratherthe probability, of volcanic catastro¬phes involving a million or evenseveral million deaths. Like a giantland-mine under our feet, this dangerthreatens vast areas of the globe,including a number of countries whichbelieve themselves safe from volcanic

perils.

Governments, whether "advanced"or "developing", are obviously notworried, primarily because of ignor¬ance, but also through lack of fore¬sight. Thus, as soon as we arrivedin a country on a volcanological inves¬tigation mission, the local authoritieshave sometimes submitted the most

preposterous projects to us, not merelyrevealing a complete misunderstand¬ing of what an eruption is but evenproposing methods for slowing orstopping it or for harnessing its energyfor industrial use; we have really hadthe greatest trouble in convincingthem that their beautiful plans werescatter-brained.

During a recent mission to a countrywhere an eruption had gone on conti¬nuously for a year, we could see assoon as we visited the volcano an un¬

mistakable threat to the inhabited

areas around its base; as soon as the

rainy season started, the valleys wouldbe swept by torrents of volcanic mud,the terrible lahars which year in andyear out claim thousands of victimsthroughout the world.

Civil engineers should have set towork months beforehand to protect thepopulation, building embankments todivert the thrust of the liquid mud

pouring down at 50 or 60 kilometresan hour.

As nothing of the sort had beendone, all that remained was to keepa watch on the upper slopes of themountain where the lahars would start,

and get the people ready to evacuatethe threatened regions calmly and ingood order at any moment of the dayor night. I accordingly put a plan tothe authorities but could see straightaway that it evoked no enthusiasmwhatsoever.

After a fortnight, my friend IvanElskens, the expedition's chemist, final¬ly came up with a psychological expla¬nation. Whatever a government may doto avoid a . catastrophe, natural orotherwise, it will still be criticized bythe opposition. Why lay oneself open

particularly since, whatever effortsare made, it is almost certain that theywill not be totally successful, volca¬nological forecasting being at presentno more foolproof than weather fore¬casting (although it seems as absurdnot to attempt it as not to attempt toforecast the weather)? Natural catas¬trophes being, by the nature ofthings, beyond the power of govern¬ments, governments are unwilling tochance their funds on undertakingswhich simple prudence would dictate.

This is, I think, the reason why offi¬cial contributions to volcanologicalresearch have been, except in the caseof Japan, so insignificant. Earthquakeforecasting, which is much more diffi¬cult' than the forecasting of eruptions,receives equally little encouragement.The authorities try to forget disastersas quickly as possible: despite thedestruction of San Francisco in 1906,the richest and most powerful countryin the world had to wait sixty years,until the Anchorage disaster of 1964,before it was decided to invest in the

necessary seismological equipmentand try to forecast future cataclysms.

AFEW more examples like

Krakatoa, St. Pierre de la Martinique,or Pompeii will probably be necessarybefore the decision is made to set upobservatories which would make it

possible to forecast the awakening of"extinct" volcanoes and the openingof fissures from which ignimbrite flowsescape.

Providing the indispensable minimumof funds are allocated, it should beeasier today to forecast the awakeningof a volcano than to forecast the wea¬

ther. This is, alas, still far from beingthe case. Forecasting depends on de¬tecting significant fluctuations in aseries of physical and chemical para¬meters. The difficulty lies in interpret¬ing the changes observed; some ofthe parameters at times speak a rela-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

The 30,000 inhabitants of Pompeiiand the 6,000 of neighbouringHerculanum were taken completelyunawares when Mount Vesuvius

began to erupt in earnest on an Augustmorning in the year 79 A.D. Pompeiihad just finished reconstructingmost of its buildings, devastated inthe earthquake which ravaged thecity 17 years earlier. When the hailof volcanic ash and pumice descendedon the city, some people soughtrefuge in their homes while most fledacross the countryside. Thousandssuccumbed. The city remained buriedfor 18 centuries until it was graduallydug out. Today, Pompeii, likeHerculanum, presents the dramaticspectacle of a powerful Romancity in the grip of fear and death.Plaster moulds of the cavities left inthe ashes after bodies had mouldered

into dust show the postures of peopleat the moment they were killed byfumes, ashes and debris. Below,the outline of the body of a man whodied in the last moments of Pompeii.Left, close to the Forum in Pompeii,a statue of Apollo stands out todayagainst the backdrop of Vesuvius.

THE LAST MOMENTS OF POMPEIIPhoto © Roger Vlollet

r? ä

mfe

W.W.

MENACE OF 'EXTINCT' VOLCANOES (Continued)

Eruption forecasting could be easier

than predicting the weather

at the stage ofthe causes and

mechanism of

tively comprehensible language whileothers remain, for the present at least,indecipherable.

Since we are still

conjecture regardingconsequently theeruptions, these variation which mod;em techniques make it possible tomeasure cannot really be understoodnor, therefore, can their meaning beinterpreted with certainty.

But there is a gradual improvement,and successful forecasts of impendingactivity have several times been made,the best example being the eruption ofKilauea in December 1959-January1960: seismographs had given noticeof the awakening of the volcano nearlysix months before it erupted.

Thanks to their excellent observa¬tion network on Hawaii and on Kilauea

itself, scientists of the volcanologicalobservatory were able to determine

the focal depth of the tremors: about50 kilometres, which is suprisingenough for volcanic seismic effects, thehypocentre of which is usually localiz¬ed less than 5 kilometres below the

surface, and still more surprising inHawaii where the lower limit of the

earth's crust itself is only 15 kilo¬metres below sea level.

In the following weeks, the volcano¬logists noted that the focal depth wasgetting less and less and by measur¬ing the speed of the rise they pro¬duced an estimate of the time it would

take for this depth to be reduced tozero, i.e., when the magma would eruptat the surface.

As the measurements continued the

coefficient of error due to extrapolationwas reduced. A network of field seis¬

mographs was brought into service inaddition to the fixed network, allowinghigh-precision determination of the

co

THE CIRCLE

OF FIRE

AROUND THE

NOT SO

PACIFIC

OCEAN

No less than 62 percent of the world's

active volcanoes are

located in what is oftencalled "the circle of

fire" in the Pacific.

Left, the majestic coneof Mt. Shishaldin in

Alaska, one of the79 volcanoes in a chain

running through theAleutian Islands into

the Alaskan peninsular.Above, grandiosefirework displays fromactive craters in the

Kamchatka chain

(28 volcanoes).

S1

»^

Photos © APN - Vadim Gnppenrelter

epicentres, i.e., the zones where theeruption was likely to take place (withthis vast shield volcano, eruptions canoccur equally well in the area of thecentral crater or up to 10 or 20 kilo¬metres away on the slopes of themountain).

As the tremors increased in number

and intensity, the whole volcanoswelled, probably under the pressureof the rising magma the angles anddirections of this tumescence, which

is otherwise quite imperceptible, canbe accurately measured with the aid ofinstruments know as tiltmeters or clino¬

meters.

Thus, by carefully following the evo¬lution of phenomena which had longbeen known to be closely connectedwith the rise of the magma, the scien¬tists at Hawaii Observatory were ableto predict with unprecedented accu¬racy the exact point the Kilauea Ikicrater and moment where the erup¬tion would take place.

They went even better: when theeruption stopped after three weeks ofviolent and spectacular activity, notonly were they able to state that ithad not finished and would start again,but were even able to say that thiswould happen 15 kilometres away nearthe small village of Kapoho. As aresult, it was possible to evacuate thepopulation and even' all their movablebelongings before the earth gapedopen to release the gas and incandes¬cent lava which was to destroy thehouses and fields.

Unfortunately, it is not always soeasy to interpret seismograph and cli¬nometer data. The behaviour of

volcanoes of the Hawaian type is rela¬tively straightforward, but that of mostof the others is not particularly thedangerously explosive stratified coneswhich abound in the circum-Pacific

"ring of fire". These latter are, how¬ever, up to now at least, the subjectof the most wary observation, sincemore than half of the paltry dozenvolcanological observatories whichexist are concentrated here, most ofthem in Japan, one in Kamchatka andanother in New Britain (lar9est islandof the Bismarck Archipelago to theeast of New Guinea).

There is as yet no means of knowingexactly why eruptions of one type arefairly predictable and why others defyforecasting. The difference appears todepend on the nature of the magma,on its chemical composition, its visco¬sity, its content in dissolved gases,and perhaps even its origins.

Let us accept for the moment thetheory that the substance emitted bybasaltic volcanoes comes from a deepmagma, highly fluid and relatively poorin gases and everywhere present be¬neath the earth's crust, whilst thecircum-Pacific volcanoes are fed bylimited magma chambers, strung outalong narrow zones and consisting ofpockets, within the crust itself, ofmolten rocks whose composition givesthe substance a high viscosity and ahigh gas content. It is then easy tosee that the eruptive processes ofthese different types of magma willbe different and so, therefore, will be

the premonitory signs which make itpossible to predict them.

To reach the surface and erupt, afluid magma coming up from the depthsof the earth has to force its waythrough kilometres of rock, thus open¬ing fissures first in the depths of theearth and then higher and higher as itrises, or widening existing conduits.When it finally reaches the last fewkilometres, this new intruded material

produces a swelling in the configura¬tion of the volcano itself and it ¡s

this which the seismographs and tilt-meters register: the tremors accom¬panying the opening of the fractures,and the tumescence of the mountain

itself.

The magmas of the circum-Pacific.chain are a different matter. Probablystarting life at lesser depths with themelting of sediments within the earth'scrust itself, rich in silica and water,they are both viscous and gas-super-satured.

Before going any further, I wouldlike to point out that although theseideas are based on geological evi¬dence, they are nevertheless only ahypothesis, and the evidence could beinterpreted in different ways. We knowa lot less about the inside of our own

planet than about outer space a para¬dox that has various explanations; part¬ly the nature of cosmic and terrestrialmatter, but also the incredible dis¬proportion in the sums allocated forthese two different kinds of research.

The inadequacy of the funds allocat¬ed for the study of the interior ofthe earth shows once again how under¬estimated is the importance of suchresearch.

Even from the utilitarian point ofview, the future of mankind lies here onearth. Mankind will have to dig deeperand deeper into the earth to find min¬eral deposits when those at the sur¬face have been exhausted, but theold empirical methods of finding themwill no longer do, and they will have tobe located before drilling even starts;for this we shall need more positivetheories concerning the origin of thesedeposits than those we make do withat present, and we shall find themonly if we go and look for fresh datain the depths of the earth itself.

Accepting the hypothesis that the

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

9

MENACE OF 'EXTINCT'

VOLCANOES (Continued)

Rip-Van-Winkles

and legends of

Sleepy Hollows

10

circumLPacific magmas do not stretchround the whole globe in a continuouslayer beneath the earth's crust but formpockets within the crust, that becauseof their viscosity, their mobility isextremely low, and that they containa high quantity of dissolved gases, wecan understand why seismographs andtiltmeters cannot, as in the case ofbasaltic volcanoes, clearly warn of theapproach of an eruption.

If such be indeed the case, the

magma would normally be quite nearto the surface and the seismic effects

accompanying any possible rise of themagma would not be distinguishable,as in the case of Hawaii, by their focaldepth from the tremors due to variouscauses which are constantly occurringin the upper kilometres of any activevolcano.

Moreover, this magma is often soviscous that the speed of its rise isgreatly reduced, if not nil. The seismiceffects connected with the rise of the

nragma may thus be lost among ordi¬nary earth tremors, making it very dif¬ficult if not impossible for the seismo¬logist to distinguish genuine fore-shocks. Tiltmeter readings would beequally useless: the volcano will ob¬viously not swell unless matter is risingup inside, it.

How do these volcanoes erupt atall if there is little or no rise of the

lava from the magma chamber towardsthe surface? It may be that the actionof the gases alone is responsible.

Years or centuries may pass andas yet we have no means of tellingfrom the surface of the earth that this

slow concentration of endogenic ener¬gy is going on. As a result, such acrater will soon come to be classified

as belonging to an extinct volcano

and we know the terrifying conse¬quences which. this may have.

In these circumstances, how canwe forecast a renewal of activity? Inthe first place, at the risk of repeat¬ing myself, I would say that we mustget it into our heads that whatever thetype of volcano, magma or activity con¬cerned, we shall never be able to pre¬dict anything with any accuracy unlessa constant watch is kept by a specia¬lized team.

Once this has been established, andaccepting the theory that the violentexplosions of volcanoes of the circum-Pacific type are in fact the result ofthe accumulation of gases under theroof of the chamber, it would seemlogical to look for significant signs inpossible changes in the fumaroleswhich the crater exhales to a grea'teror less extent and which have their

origins inside the pocket of incubatinglava. Changes discovered in this waymay not always be easy to interpret

in so far as they can be interpretedat all but logically they must hold aclue to what is going on down below.

THE temperature of some

fumaroles has been recorded for a longtime back, on the logical assumptionthat the temperature will rise as aneruption approaches. However, withacid volcanoes at least, this method of

detecting an eruption has had practical¬ly no success. This is not surprising ifwe accept the theory that explosiveeruptions are the result of the buildingup of gas pressure and not of the riseof magma, since it is essentially thelatter which determines the rise in

temperature.

We are thus left with the chemical

composition of fumaroles, which oughtto depend on the deep-lying processesmentioned above. The reflection of

these processes in the chemistry ofthe fumarole gases should providevaluable information.

Observation of a dormant volcano

may not require analyses at very closeintervals, but the development of thechemical composition and pressure ofthe fumaroles should at least be follow¬

ed step by step. Since only gases areinvolved, this alone might yield warn¬ing signs, however slight, by which todetect renewed volcanic activity. Butthe best hope for a better understand¬ing of volcanic activity, and, hence, ofdeveloping volcanological forecastingis to make a close study of the varia¬tions, both sudden and gradual, inthe gases given off from the mouth ofan active volcano sampled at a fixedpoint.

This is the job with which we havebeen particularly concerned; to try andanalyse the volcanic gases as nearlycontinuously as possible, and to lookfor warning signs in the variation intheir composition and in the compari¬son between this variation and varia¬

tions detected by other means suchas the seismograph and the clinometer.

The first samples of gas taken byour group were analysed in a labo¬ratory by Dr. Marcel Chaigneau, direc¬tor of the Gas Laboratory at the CentreNational de la Recherche Scientifiquein Paris, using the Lebeau and Damiensmethod over a mercury trough. Theresults were extremely accurate butthe operations took so long that, withthe resources at our disposal (i.e.,without special volcanological staff or

MOSTTERRIFYINGERUPTIONOF ALLThe most formidable formof volcanic activity is

an ignimbrite eruption. Itresults from the sudden,

almost lightning-fastescape of magma which,after opening up a longfissure in the ground,bursts forth and spreadsout over a vast area, thencools to form a solid

crust. Though suchincandescent "tidal waves"were once common, onlyone has occurred inhistoric times. This

happened in Alaska55 years ago, fortunatelyin an uninhabited region,and created what is now

called the Valley of TenThousand Smokes. Left, atthe bottom of this valley,glacier-like formationsmark the extremity of theignimbrite flow. Right, acliff of solidified magma(averaging 100 metres;330 feet in height).

*jjb x myjifa w 4:-"» £

, ^

n Tazieff

equipment) no more than two or threeseries of analyses could have beencarried out in a year. The problemsto be solved in fact require the resultsof hundreds of analyses for, primarily,what we are trying to do is to detectand follow up variations in compositionwhich we intuitively feel to be im¬portant.

It was at this point that two chem¬ists in our team1, Dr. I. Elskens ofthe University of Brussels, andDr. F. Tonani, of the University ofFlorence, rightly pointed out that thehigh degree of accuracy obtained overa mercury trough was not absolutelynecessary for our purposes, since itwas more important to detect varia¬tions and establish relationships bet¬ween the various constituents than to

know their exact composition.

By adopting a new industrial pro¬cess used for quantitative analysisof traces of gas in offices and facto¬ries, we were able to do two analysesa minute and on one occasion when

the explosive activity was favourable(i.e., strong enough and at the sametime so directed that it was possibíeto get near to the erupting mouth)we were able to spend more thantwo hours inside the crater of Strom-

boli itself and carry out a long seriesof tests, mainly to determine theamounts of water and carbon dioxide

present and with the subsidiary aimof determining the hydrochloric acidcontent. Although we expected to findfluctuations, the range and rapidityof those we did discover amazed us.

The carbon dioxide content went

from 0 to 25 per cent in less than3 minutes and that of water vapourfrom 0 to 45 per cent in a similartime and even from 20 to 50 per cent

in a few seconds, that is it more thandoubled almost instantaneously.

With the hazardous and uncomfort¬

able conditions under which we were

working, it was difficult, in addition totaking samples, to note with accuracythe timing of eruptive effects and parti¬cularly of explosions. It would seemhowever, that there is a close con¬nexion between variations in water and

carbon dioxide content and the explo¬sive activity of the volcano, althoughwe still do not have sufficient data to

draw firm conclusions.

Continuous sampling at very fre¬quent intervals is thus absolutely nec¬essary for a proper study of the prob¬lems of eruptive activity. On the otherhand, a watch can be kept quite satis¬factorily on the fumaroles escapingfrom a dormant crater, which are ob¬viously subject to infinitely slowervarations, by less frequent analyses,the development curve being deter¬mined from points obtained at intervalsof only one a month or even less.

B UT to reach an understand¬

ing of the mechanism of eruptionsproper, even our new procedure is in¬sufficient, particularly since it is un¬usual to be able to stay more than afew minutes or even seconds at a time

in a really active crater. In fact thememorable "Operation Stromboli," dur¬ing which we had several times beenpeppered with incandescent projectiles(from which our fibreglass helmetsgave us very good protection), endedmore or less in a scramble for safetyafter three hours when, following anexplosion which had produced a parti¬cularly large number of projectiles, the

rubber soles on the boots of the most

intrepid volcanologist that I know,Franco Tonani, caught fire. We tookthe hint and left.

Ivan Elskens, who quite properly be¬lieves that the mouth of a volcano is no

place for any man in his right mind,decided thereupon to apply himselfto the realization of our old dream

of an instrument capable of carryingout continuous and automatic samp¬ling and analysis of the volcanic gasesand transmitting the results to arecording meter situated at a respect¬ful distance from the crater. "Then youcan go and mess about near thecraters as much as you like," Elskenstold us, "and I will make myself com¬fortable with a glaás of beer and abook and just look up from time totime to keep an eye on the meter."

In actual fact, in three years, withthe assistance of an electronics expert,Mr. Bara, he succeeded in develop¬ing this instrument. On August 29,1966, on the slopes of the north-eastbocea of Etna, Elskens, albeit without

a glass of beer, used his field tele-chromatograph for the first time,measuring, to start with, a single cons¬tituent of the volcanic gas and record¬ing by remote control the variationsin the carbon dioxide content of gasesissuing at a temperature of 1,000°from a vent which was belching outmolten lava.

It is too early yet to talk about theresults of this operation or predict thepotential of the new instrument, butI am sure that a very important stepforward has been made and that the u *

simultaneous recording of two such I Ifundamental parameters as seismicactivity and the composition of thegas given off by an erupting volcano

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

MENACE OF 'EXTINCT* VOLCANOES (Continued)

Research fundsthe weapon

most lacking to volcanologists

will enable us to understand this mys¬terious phenomenon infinitely betterthan hitherto.

I would like also to mention the

two other new aids to observation

and forecasting. One resembles thetiltmeter but provides more easilyinterpretable data than tilt variationswhich, especially with volcanoes ofthe circum-Pacific type, are often mis¬leading.

The method consists of measuringthe diameter of a crater by means ofa tellurometer. Robert W. Decker,whose idea it was, measured the dia¬meter of Kilauea at fairly close inter¬vals and discovered that it was increas¬

ing continuously and quite noticeablyright up to the time of eruption.

Before instruments were available

to measure distances of up to severaltens of kilometres very accurately andvery rapidly, such operations weremuch too slow and expensive to beof practical value in volcanology. Itis now quite possible that the Deckermethod will produce results greatlysuperior to those obtained by clino¬meters.

The second method, used for long-range forecasting (several months to,perhaps, several years), is based ona hypothesis deduced by Mr. C. Blot,head of the geophysics section at theORSTOM Centre, Noumea (New Cal¬edonia), from the relationship whichappears to exist between certain deep(550 to 650 kilometres below the sur¬face) and intermediary (150 to 250 kilo¬metres) seismic effects, and certaineruptions in the New Hebrides archi¬pelago.

Sresults

General

12

INCE submitting the firstof his observations at the

Assembly of the InternationalUnion of Geodesy and Geophysics atBerkeley in August 1963, Blot has beenapplying the relationships which he hasdiscovered -to attempted forecasts ofthe volcanic eruptions in the region ofthe New Hebrides. In the last three

years, the volcanoes Gaua, Ambrymand Lopévi all resumed strong activityon dates forecast months in advance.

In collaboration with Mr. J. Grover,chief of geological survey, SolomonIslands, it has been possible to extendthese studies and forecasts to the vol¬

canoes of the Santa Cruz and Solo¬

mon Islands (Tinakula and variousunderwater volcanoes).

At the last Pacific Scientific Con¬

gress in Tokyo, September 1966, Blotand Grover presented a paper settingout the results of these forecasts of

volcanic eruptions in the south-westPacific which ended a follows:

"It seems more and more likely thata relationship exists between deep

seismic effects, intermediary effectsand volcanic eruptions. The relation¬ship between deep effects and erup¬tions cannot be a direct one, since

explosions and lava flows do not ori¬ginate at depths of 400 to 700 kilo¬metres.

"However, a certain alteration intensions or an abrupt change of phaseat these depths could set off a thermo-energy phenomenon which in zoneswhere the critical physical conditionsobtain, particularly under the volcanicarcs could cause other rapid changesproducing intermediary seismic effectsat depths between 250 and 60 kilo¬metres, depending on the regionaltectonics. These would be the zones

in the upper mantle where the moltenpockets occur and where magmaforms and where, according to theviews of, for example, Dr. Shimozuruand Dr. Gorshkov, volcanic eruptionsoriginate.

"By observing seismic activity in agiven area following the start of deepseismic effects and by the detectionand localization of intermediary effectsbeneath volcanic areas, it will bepossible to keep a closer watch onone sector or one volcano several

months before a possible eruption."

The relationships discovered in theNew Hebrides and, with increasingfrequency, throughout the Pacific showthat there may be a constant intervalbetween the beginnings of phenomenaat different levels right up to the sur¬face, if the depth, distances and inten¬sities of these phenomena and other,still somewhat indeterminate tectonic,

physical and chemical factors can betaken into account.

These intervals appear to be, onaverage, from 10 to 14 months betweenthe 650 and 200 kilometre levels (alongthe line of the 60° inclination of the

deep structures of the Pacific arcs)and from 4 to 8 months between the

intermediary seismic effects 200 kilo¬metres beneath the volcanoes and the

actual eruptions.

If this theory proves true, it wouldbe of the utmost value for the fore¬

casting of possible cataclysms. Sofar it has not been possible to verifyit thoroughly outside the New Hebri¬des area and, even there, it is a littleearly yet to draw any final conclusionsregarding the reality of these rela¬tionships.

Though some questions remain tobe answered about the mechanical,

physical and chemical processes whichdetermine the upward propagation ofendogenic energy at a speed of somehundreds of kilometres a year fromthe depths up to the neck of a vol¬cano, this link, if it really exists, willcertainly be one of the basic criteriain volcanological forecasting in thefuture.

Photo USIS

KILAUEA, THE HELPFUL

Kilauea, on the Pacific island of Hawaii, gives due warning of its eruptions. It is one of the few volcanoes whosebehaviour has so far facilitated early forecasts of impending activity. Its eruption in December 1959 was foreseen sixmonths earlier thanks to recorded data which volcanologists used to predict with unprecedented accuracy the place andtime of the eruption, thus enabling the local population to be evacuated in time. Photo shows lake of molten lavathat fills the Kilauea crater (10 sq. km.: 4 sq. miles in area).

MARIE CURIE

The life of a woman

dedicated to science

The story of the life of Marie Curie recounted below istaken from "Madame Curie", the biography written by herdaughter Eve Curie, translated into English by VincentSheean and published and © 1937 by Doubleday, Doranand Co., Inc, Garden City, New York. Drawing on docu¬ments, narratives and recollections of Marie Curie's contem¬

poraries, and on the personal notes, letters and journals ofPierre and Marie Curie, the book evokes with insight andunderstanding the personality, astonishing career andscientific achievements of a woman of whom her daughterwrote: "She did not know how to be famous".

Text © Reproduction prohibited

14

IN a night pierced withwhistles, clanking and rattling, a fourth-class carriage made its way throughGermany. The carriage had no properseats. Crouched down on a foldingchair Maria Sklodowska, whom theworld was to know as Marie Curie,

was thinking of the past, and of thisjourney which she had waited for solong.

She tried to imagine the future.She thought, quite sincerely, that oneday she would be. making her wayback to her native Warsaw, in two

years, three years time at the most,when she would find herself a snuglittle job as a teacher.

It was the winter of 1891. She was

twenty-four. And she was on herwayto Paris, to the Sorbonne. It had beena hard struggle. To leave the countryshe loved. To save enough for thefare.

What she wanted above all was to

continue her studies, to work. But

this was impossible in a Poland,groaning under the heel of Czaristoppression. The University of Warsawwas not open to women. She dreamedof studying in Paris. And* eventually,by skimping and saving, she managedto collect enough for her fare.

The moment came when she was

stepping from the train on to theplatform of the Gare du Nord. Forthe first time in her life she was

breathing the air of a free country.With that ardency which was part

of her nature, Marie flung herself intoher new life.

"She worked...," her daughter,Eve Curie later wrote in the biographyof her mother, "as if in a fever. Sheattended courses in mathematics,

physics and chemistry. Manualtechnique, the minute precisionneeded for scientific experimentbecame familiar to her. Soon she was

to have the joy of being responsiblefor researches, which, though of nogreat importance, nevertheless allowedher to demonstrate her skill and origi¬nality of mind.

"She had a passionate love for theatmosphere of the laboratory, its"climate" of dedication and silence,which she was to prefer to her dyingday. She decided that one master'sdegree was not enough. She wouldobtain two. One in physics and onein mathematics."

She had built herself a secret uni¬

verse, dominated by her passion forscience. Her love for her family

and her country had their place inthis universe, but something whichhad no place, which she had ruledout completely from her life, was thatother kind of love, which previouslyhad brought her only humiliation anddisappointment. Marriage simply didnot come into her scheme of things.

"Perhaps," Eve Curie wrote in herbook, "it is not surprising that a youngPolish girl of genius, living on theedge of poverty miles away from hernative land, should have kept herselfto herself for her work. But it is

surprising that a Frenchman, ascientist of genius, should have kepthimself for that Polish girl."

w,'hile Marie, still almost achild, was living in Warsaw and dream¬ing one day of coming to the Sorbonneto study, Pierre Curie, returning homeone day from that same Sorbonnewhere he was already making impor¬tant discoveries in Physics confidedthese thoughts to his diary: "Womanloves life for the living of it far morethan we do: women of genius are rare.We have to struggle against womenwhen, driven on by some 'mystic' love,

Maria Sklodowska in

1892. She was 24. And

she had only been in Parisfor a few months. At last

her dream of studyingscience at the Sorbonne

had come true. Ten yearslater she discovered

radium and received world

acclaim as one of the

greatest scientists ofmodern times.

we wish to pursue some path whichis against nature, some work whichalienates us from the human beingsnearest and dearest to us."

The second son of a physician,Dr. Eugène Curie, Pierre had receivedno "formal" education. He never went

to school. Instead he was taught firstby his father then by a private tutor.It was a scheme of education that paiddividends. At the age of sixteenPierre Curie was a Bachelor of

Science. At the age of eighteen hehad a master's degree. At nineteenhe was appointed laboratory assistantto Professor Desains in the Faculty ofScience a post he held for five years.He was engaged on research with hisbrother Jacques. The two youngphysicists soon announced the disco¬very of the important phenomenon of"piezo-electricity."

In 1883, Jacques was appointed pro¬fessor at Montpellier, while Pierrebecame head of the laboratory at theSchool of Physics and Chemistry ofthe City of Paris. Even though hedevoted much of his time to his pupils,he continued his theoretical work on

crystalline physics. This work led tothe formulation of the principle ofsymmetry which has become one ofthe bases of modern science. He

invented and built an ultra-sensitive

scientific scale: the Curie Scale. He

took up research on magnetism andachieved a result of major importance,the discovery of a fundamental law:Curie's Law.

This was the man whom Marie Sklo¬

dowska was to meet for the first time

in the beginning of 1894.

"He seemed very young to me," shenoted, "although he was then thirty-five. His rather slow, reflectivewords, his air of simplicity and hissmile, at once serious and young, allinspired confidence. A conversationbegan between us and we becamefriendly; its object was some questionsof science upon which I was only toohappy to ask his opinion."

Pierre Curie later recalled their

meeting in these words: "I describedthe phenomenon of crystallographyupon which I was doing research. Itwas strange to talk to a woman of thework one loved, using technical terms,

complicated formulae, and to see that

woman, so young and so charming,become animated, understand, evendiscuss certain details with an

astonishing clarity.

"I gazed at her hair, at her highcurved forehead and her hands, whichwere already stained from the acidsof the laboratory and roughened byhousework. I dug into my memoryfor all that had been told me about this

girl. She was Polish. She had workedfor years in Warsaw before beingable to take the train to Paris; she hadno money; she lived alone in agarret..."

In the July of 1895 Pierre and MarieCurie were married.

"During these happy days wasformed one of the finest bonds that

ever united man and woman", Eve

Curie wrote. "Two hearts beat toge¬ther, two bodies were united and two

minds of genius learned to think toge¬ther. Marie could have married no

15

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

MARIE CURIE (Continued)

other than this great physicist, thiswise and noble man. Pierre could

have married no woman other than the

fair, tender Polish girl, who could bechildish then sublime within the same

few moments : for she was a friend

and a wife; a lover and a scientist.

In July 1897 their first child wasborn. Irène Curie was to follow in

her mother's steps. She took up ascientific career, married a fellowscientist, the physicist Frederic Joliotand in 1932, succeeding her mothershe became director of the Radium

Institute in Paris. In 1935 Frederic

and Irène Joliot-Curie shared the Nobel

Peace Prize in Chemistry.

At the end of 1897 the balance

sheet of Marie's achievements could

show two university degrees, a fellow¬ship and a monograph on the magne¬tization of tempered steel. The nextlogical step in her career was adoctor's degree. Reading throughreports of the latest experiments Mariewas attracted by a paper published bythe French scientist, Henri Becquerel.

Becquerel had examined the saltsof a rare metal, uranium. After Roent¬

gen's discovery of X-rays, the Frenchscientist, Henri Poincaré, conceived

the idea of discovering whether rayslike the X-ray were emitted by fluo¬rescent bodies under the action of

light.

Attracted by the same problem Bec¬querel examined the salts of uranium.

He observed, instead of .the pheno¬menon he had expected, another alto¬gether different and incomprehensible.Without exposure to light, uraniumsalts emitted, spontaneously, somerays of an unknown nature. A com¬pound of uranium, placed on a photo¬graphic plate surrounded by blackpaper, made an impression on theplate through the paper.

Becquerel's discovery fascinated theCuries. They asked themselves wherethe energy came from, the energywhich uranium compounds constantlygave off in the form of radiation. Andwhat the nature of this radiation was.

Here, indeed, was a subject worthy ofresearch, of a doctor's thesis.

A II that remained was the

question of where Marie was to doher experiments. After certain dif¬ficulties, Marie was given the use of alittle glassed-in studio on the groundfloor of the School of Physics. It wasa kind of store-room, sweating withdamp, where discarded machinery andlumber were locked away. Its technic¬al equipment was rudimentary, itscomfort non-existent. Deprived of anadequate supply of electricity and ofeverything that normally forms materialfor the beginning of scientificresearch, Marie, however, kept herpatience. She sought and found a

means of making her apparatus workin this hole.

And it was under these primitiveconditions, on the ground floor of theSchool of Physics in the Rue Lhomondin Paris that two new elements were

discovered : polonium and radium.

But nobody had seen radium, nobodyknew its atomic weight. The chemistswere sceptical. "Show us radium,"they said, "and we will believe you."

To show polonium and radium to thesceptics, to prove to the world theexistence of their two new elements,and to confirm their own convictions,Pierre and Marie Curie were to labour

for four more years... in a woodenshack, an abandoned shed, whichstood across a courtyard from Marie'soriginal work-room. This shed hadonce been used by the Faculty ofMedicine as a dissecting room, but fora long time it had not even been con¬sidered fit for a mortuary.

"We had no money, no laboratory,and no help in carrying out this impor¬tant and difficult task," Marie later

recalled. "It was like creating some¬thing out of nothing. I may say, withoutexaggeration, that for my husband andmyself this period was the "heroic"period of our lives. And yet it was inthat miserable shed that the best and

happiest years of our lives were spentdevoted entirely to work. I some-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

16

The rarest, most precious vital force

by Marie Curie

On May 15, 1922 the Council of theLeague of Nations in Geneva unani¬

mously named Marie Curie a member ofthe League's Committee on Intellectual

Co-operation, of which she later becamevice-president. On June 16, 1926 Marie

Curie presented to the Committee amemorandum on international scholar¬

ships for the advancement of science. In

it she discussed the problems of workingconditions in laboratories and the encou¬

ragement of scientific vocations, and

outlined a plan for the promotion ofinternational scholarships in science.The following is the preamble of thememorandum.

I shall devote but few words to an affirmation of

faith in the importance of science for mankind. If at times

this importance has been questioned and if the words

"the failure of science" have been pronounced in moments

of bitter discouragement, it is because man's endeavours

to achieve his highest aspirations are never perfect, likeall that is human, and because these endeavours have too

often been diverted from their path by forces of egocentricnationalism and social regression.

Yet it is through the constant effort to expand science

that man has risen to his present pre-eminent place on our

planet and that he is also winning increasing power over

nature and a larger measure of well-being. We should

join with those who, like Rodin, pay homage to the devotedefforts of scholars and thinkers and with those who, like

Pasteur, "believe indomitably that science and peace will

triumph over ignorance and war".

If, to judge from the experience of the recent world

conflict, the aspirations of the elites in different lands often

appear less exalted than those of the great mass of lesswell educated persons, it is because of the perils inherent

in all forms of intellectual and political power when these

are not controlled and channeled toward, the high ideals

which alone justify their use. No enterprise can therefore

In 1903, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre (above)received, with the French scientist Henri Becquerel, the

Nobel Prize for Physics. Marie Curie was the first womanto receive a Nobel Prize. In 1911 she was also the second

woman so honoured for scientific achievements, beingawarded the N°bel Prize for Chemistry. And when a

Nobel Prize was given to a woman scientist for the third

time, it went to Marie Curie's daughter, Irene who, withher husband Frederic Joliot (photo right) was awarded the

Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. Since then threewomen scientists have been named Nobel Prize winners:

U.S. scientists Gerty T. Cori (Medicine, 1947) and Maria

Goeppert Mayer (Physics, 1963) and U.K. scientist Dorothy

Crowfoot-Hodgkin (Chemistry, 1964).

THE FAMILY

OF FIVE

NOBEL

PRIZE WINNERS

have greater importance than those which seek to promote

international ties between the dynamic thinkers in all

countries and especially between the young in whose handslies the future of mankind.

I am sure that no one will deny that even in the most

democratic of countries existing social systems offer a

considerable advantage to the wealthy and that the roads

to higher education, open so freely to children of families

with ample means, are still difficult of access to children

of families with limited resources.

As a result every nation each year loses a large part of

the rarest, most precious vital force. While waiting for

reforms in education to resolve this problem once and for

all, the democratic response in various countries has

hitherto consisted of a partial remedy, the creation of

national educational scholarships, thus enabling higher

education to retrieve some of the young people of whom

it would otherwise be deprived.

These national efforts, highly commendable though stillfar from adequate, are not our concern here, but I would

like to point out that the same problem exists with regard

to post university studies for the young people who have

managed to surmount all the obstacles encountered up to

that point.

At this post-university stage of their lives, young studentswho contemplate careers in science are brought face to

face with pressing demands. In most cases the family

has done its utmost to help the young man or woman tocome this far and, unable to make further sacrifices, it

now asks them to become self supporting. And even in

well-to-do families the wish to take up very advanced

studies may encounter a lack of understanding, such studies

being considered as an extravagance or a mere whim.

Yet what in fact are the best interests of society in this

matter? Should it not give every encouragement to those

called to a scientific vocation? Is it really so well-endow¬

ed that it can afford to reject the vocations it is offered?

I believe, on the basis of personal experience, that the

sum total of the aptitudes called for by a true scientific

vocation is an infinitely frail and precious thing, a rare

treasure that it is both absurd and criminal to throw away,

a gift to which great care must be devoted so that it may

grow and fructify.

What, in reality, are some Of the qualities required of

the person who aspires to success in the field of indepen¬

dent scientific research? The intellectual qualities are an

intelligence capable of learning and understanding; a sure

judgment capable of appraising the significance of theo¬

retical and experimental demonstrations, an imagination

capable of creative effort. Equally important are the moral

faculties: perseverance, zeal and above all the unselfish

dedication that guides the novice, along a path which, inmost cases, will never lead him to material rewards com¬

parable to those offered by careers in industry or business.

Thus to foster and safeguard the scientific vocation is a

sacred duty for each society which has the interests of its

future at heart. It is gratifying to see that public opinion

is becoming increasingly conscious of this duty.

17

MARIE CURIE (Continued)

times passed a whole day stirring aboiling mass of pitchblende, with aniron rod almost as big as myself. Inthe evening I would be broken withfatigue."

It was in 1902, forty-five monthsafter the day on which the Curies hadannounced the probable existence ofradium, that Marie finally succeededin preparing a decigramme of pureradium. She made a first calculation

as to its atomic weight 225.

Now the sceptics of which therewere still a few could only bowbefore the facts, before the super¬human obstinacy of a woman who hadperformed one of the great scientificfeats of the century. Now radiumofficially existed.

Marie and Pierre were to have four

more years together, four years duringwhich radium became an industry, wasused in the field of medicine to cure

growths, tumours and most impor¬tant certain forms of cancers: another

daughter, Eve, was born; in 1903 theCuries received, with Henri Becquerel,the Nobel Prize for Physics; the nameCurie became world-famous.

Then one rainy morning in the Aprilof 1906 Pierre was making his wayhome up the Rue Dauphme. Crossingthe street, he was killed when the back

wheel of a horsedrawn wagon passedover his skull.

On that day in April, Madame Curiebecame, not only a widow, but a pitifuland incurably lonely woman.

18

hat was to become of her

now? What was to become of the

research Pierre had left in suspense,and of his teaching at the Sorbonne?On May 13, 1906, the council of theFaculty of Science decided, unanim¬ously, to maintain the chair created forPierre Curie and offer it to his wife.

In 1911, Mane Curie was awarded

the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In 1912,she was created Member of the Scien¬

tific Society of Warsaw. In 1913 shebecame Member Extraordinary of theRoyal Academy of Sciences (Mathe¬matics and Physics section) Amster¬dam; Doctor of the University of Birm¬ingham and Honorary Member of theAssociation of Arts and Sciences of

Edinburgh. In the same "year sheattended in Warsaw the opening of theradioactivity laboratory, dedicated toher.

In the following year, a small whitebuilding was completed in the RuePierre Curie in Pans. Cut into the

stone, above its entrance, were thewords : Institut du Radium, PavillonCurie. This "temple of the future" wasnow ready to receive its radium, itsworkers and its director.

With the outbreak of the First World

War, Mane Curie foresaw the urgentneed to organize the manufacture of

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

in 1895, after studying at the Sorbonne for four years,Maria Sklodowska, the Polish student, married Pierre Curie,

the French physicist (left). Until Pierre's deatji In 1906they pursued, with the same intense passion, whatPierre once called "our scientific dream". Their eleven

years together, working with only bare necessities, produceda phenomenal result: the discovery of polonium andradium. Above, the makeshift laboratory in which MarieCurie succeeded in producing the first decigrammesof the mysterious white metal: radium.

YEARS OF HAPPINESS, WORK AND TRIUMPH

In 1921, seated in a chair andencircled by reporters andcameramen, Marie Curiearrives in New York. A

retiring woman, she nowunderwent the ordeal of beingfamous. To thank the United

States for the gift of agramme of radium, she hadconquered her fears andfor the first time in her life she

accepted the obligations ofa great official journey. Shewas the discoverer of

radium, but lacked the means

to produce it in the quantityneeded for her research.

At the University of Columbia,in the United States, MarieCurie advances to receive

the honorary degree ofDoctor of Science. She was

then aged 54. During herlifetime she was so honoured

twenty times by universitiesin the U.S.A., Britain,

Poland and Switzerland.

Marie Curie at the wheel of one of the radiological cars she put into serviceduring the First World War. More than one fnillion wounded soldiers wereexamined in the 20 cars and 200 fixed posts created by Marie Curie.

photos Archives Pierre et Marie Curie

20

MARIE CURIE (Continued)

Röntgen apparatus as well as the needfor radiological cars. She equipped andput into service 20 of these cars, retain¬ing one for her personal use. Sheasked no special favour. She who hadonce nearly starved in a garret didnot find it difficult to transform herself

into a frontline soldier.

I n 1922, 35 members of theAcademy of Médecine of Paris sub¬mitted the following petition to theircolleagues: "The undersigned membersthink that the Academy would do itselfhonour by electing Madame Curie asa free associate member, in recognitionof the part she took in the discoveryof radium and of a new treatment in

medicine, Curiotherapy."

This was a revolutionary document.Not only was it proposed to elect awoman for the first time to a scientific

academy in France, but, breaking withcustom altogether, it was proposed toelect her spontaneously, without herformally submitting herself as a candi¬date. Sixty-four members of the Aca¬demy of Médecine signed this mani¬festo thus giving a lesson to theirbrethren in the Academy of Sciences.All candidates to the vacant chair

retired In favour of Madame Curie.

In the September of 1927 in hersixtieth year and not long after anoperation to stem the onset of blind¬ness, she wrote to her sister, Bronya :"Sometimes my courage fails me andI think I ought to stop working anddevote myself to gardening. But I amheld by a thousand bonds, and I don'tknow when I shall be able to arrange

. things differently. Nor do I knowwhether, even by writing scientificbooks, I could live without the lab¬oratory."

Madame Pierre Curie died on July 4,1934. She was 67. The cause of her

death was an aplastic perniciousanaemia. The bone marrow did not

react, probably injured by a long expo¬sure to radiation. At the end she did

not call on her daughters, Irène orEve, or on any of her relations. Atthe end she was alone with the scien¬

tific work to which she had devoted

her life.

A year later, the book Marie hadcompleted just before ber death, wasadded to the library of the RadiumInstitute in the Rue Pierre Curie. It

was a heavy volume. On its grey coverwas the name of the author: Madame

Pierre Curie, Professor at the Sor¬

bonne. Nobel Prize in Physics. NobelPrize in Chemistry. The title was oneword : "Radioactivity".

As her daughter Eve said of her :"She was an eternal student; she

passed like a stranger across her ownlife. She remained whole, natural andalmost unaware of her astonishingdestiny. She did not know how to befamous."

Photo Centralna Agenda Fotograficzna, Warsaw

MARIA SKLODOWSKA

The Dreamer in Warsaw

by Leopold Infeld

B EFORE the last war, in

Warsaw, near the Vistula River stood

the castle of the Polish kings whichserved as the residence of Poland's

presidents between the two world wars.

Nearby lay the Old Town with itsmedieval buildings, known from thepictures by Canaletto (See the "UnescoCourier", March 1961). Near the OldTown was the "New Town", built alittle later.

The last war destroyed the castle,the Old Town and the New Town

even more thoroughly than the rest of

LEOPOLD INFELD, a leading Polish physi¬cist and a member of his country's Academyof Sciences, is head of the department oftheoretical physics at the University ofWarsaw and director of the Institute of

Theoretical Physics. From 1933 to 1935fie was at Cambridge University where hecollaborated with the famous physicist MaxBorn. From 1936 to 1938 he was at Prin¬

ceton University where he worked withProfessor Albert Einstein and from 1938 to

Î950 fie was lecturer and then professor atToronto University. He is the author ofnumerous scientific books, among them:"The Evolution of Physics" , which he wrotewith Albert Einstein.

Warsaw which was almost completely

obliterated by the Nazis.

The present government decided torebuild the Old and the New Town

exactly (at least externally) as theywere in the times of the last Polish

king and are known from old picturesand plans. Thus for a man born a

hundred years ago, the rebuilt Oldand New Town would seem stranger

than to someone born 200 years ago.

!n the New Town there is a small

thoroughfare called Fréta Street, andat number 16 a plaque records thatin 1867 Maria Sklodowska was born

there. One hundred years ago thatis, four years after the last Polish

Uprising was crushed. AfterwardsCzarist repression became even stron¬

ger than before, as did the patrioticfeelings of the Poles.

The mother of Maria ran a small

private school at 16 Fréta Street andher husband, Wladyslaw Sklodowski,was a secondary school teacher ofmathematics and physics. Maria'sparents were members of the smallPolish gentry. They formed a closely

In this section of

Warsaw's "New Town"

(destroyed during thelast war and completelyrebuilt since 1945),Maria Sklodowska was

born and spent heryouth. Later, when shebecame Marie Curie,she wrote in her

autobiography of thoseearly days» "I devotedmost evenings to myown education. I had

heard that a certain

number of women

had managed to enterschools of highereducation in

St. Petersburg or abroadand I determined to

prepare myself tofollow them one day."

knit family in which there were fivechildren, four of them girls Zosia,Maria, Bronia, Helena and one son,Joseph. All, with the exception ofHelena Sklodowska Szalay, diedbefore the last world war.

There must have been a really cul¬tured atmosphere in the Sklodowskihome. Let me quote a passage fromthe biography of Maria SklodowskaCurie by her daughter, Eve Curie,who writes :

"It was true that Mr Sklodowski

knew everything, or nearly everything.The poor man, father of a family,balancing his budget with the greatestdifficulty, had found leisure to develophis scientific knowledge by going

through publications which he procur¬ed by considerable effort. It seemedto him quite natural to keep up withthe progress of chemistry and physics,just as it was natural to know Greekand Latin and to speak English, Frenchand German (as well as, of course,Polish and Russian); to translate thefinest works of foreign authors into hisnative language in prose or verse..."

The family often moved house,depending on the state of their finan¬ces. Nowollpki, Karmelicka and Leszno

Streets appear in the early biographyof Maria. Before the last war I knew

these streets well. They we're in theheart of the Jewish district. Theywere ugly, narrow cobble-stonedstreets, often jammed with horse-drawndroskies filled with merchandise.

In the Russian gymnasia (highschools) which prepared students forthe University, pupils were not allowedto talk to each other in their mother

tongue. They were not allowed to doso even in the street. Polish was

treated and taught as a foreign lan¬guage. If someone was found guiltyof the "crime" of speaking Polish hewas denounced and punished by soli¬tary confinement. A second offence

led to a beating and if it happened forthe third time the culprit was expelledfrom the school and no other school

could accept him. But the attempts ofthe Czarist authorities to RussifyPoland by such draconic laws proveda completa fiasco.

Some Polish students attended pri¬vate schools, at least for the beginningof their education. The young Mariawent to Jadwiga Sikorska's school forgirls at the corner of Marszalkowskaand Królewska Street. Schools like

this which did not give the right toenter university, were centres of Polishpatriotism and organized resistance.

At a moment's notice, when a certain

bell rang in the class a warning thatthe Czarist inspector had come to

visit the school everything changedin a few .seconds as if by magic. Apatriotic lesson in Polish history wouldsuddenly become a lesson on mathe¬matics conducted in Russian. Such

changes were made easier by therottenness and corruption of the

Czarist Regime. Almost all the inspec¬tors were ready to take bribes, usuallyhanded to them between the covers

of a book.

ARIA was the best student

in her class. In order to enter any

university anywhere she also had tofinish the hateful gymnasium whichshe did, winning a gold medal whenshe was barely 17 years old. TheCzarist university at that time did notaccept girls. In any case, few Polesattended it and from 1905 there was

an organized boycott of all govern¬ment schools, including the university.

Yet it was impossible to curb thePolish spirit of learning. As they did60 years later under the Nazi occu¬pation, the Poles organized a "univer¬sity on the run" : classes were held

secretly, each time in a different home.

The students also brought educationto the workers. The young peoplearound Maria felt that what the peopleof Poland needed most was educa¬

tion.

It was the era of Positivism in lit¬

erature and the time when Polish youthrebelled against Romanticism. Theywere influenced by philosophers likeAuguste Comte and Herbert Spencer;they recognized the importance of thework of great scientists such as Pas¬teur and Darwin. Maria was also

influenced by this trend. Indeed, weknow from a letter to her father that

she read Spencer's books on sociologyin French and "a wonderful book on

anatomy and physiology by Paul Bertin Russian."

Maria Sklodowska was 18 when her

older sister Bronia went to Paris to

study medicine.

It is perhaps worth mentioning thatwhile in Paris Bronia met and married

Doctor Dluski, and that after theyreturned to Poland the young coupleestablished a sanatorium in Zakopane.This health resort, lying in the beautifulTatra Mountains later became a vaca¬

tion resort for Pierre and Maria

Slodowska Curie, who were among thefirst to discover Zakopane, now knownas "the pearl of Poland".

While Bronia was in Paris, her father,

on his salary as a school teacher,

was unable to go on supporting theburden of paying for his daughter'sstudies. Maria agreed to help, and aposition of governess was offered toher by the Zurawski family.

During the holidays the Zurawski'seldest son Karol came home from the

University where he was studyingmathematics. A love-affair beganbetween Maria and Karol. Maria had

beautiful platinum blond hair, gray,sparkling eyes, and a determined

mouth. Karol was the first young, welleducated man in whom she had

become interested.

But a marriage between the daughterof a gymnasium teacher and the sonof a landowner was regarded in 19thcentury Poland, as in most of Europe,as a "mesalliance". The parents of

the boy did not give their consent.

I met Karol Zurawski when he was

about 50; I was around 20 and a

student at the Jagellonian University,Cracow, where he was then a profes¬sor of mathematics.

He was a good mathematician andthere is still a theorem in hydro¬mechanics known by his name. I sawhim even after the Second World War

in Warsaw, where he had moved fromCracow, and where he died, twenty

years after Maria's death.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

21

THE DREAMER IN WARSAW (Continued)

11

Maria's interest in mathematics

started just at the time when she methim. She was always very capableand had a good memory. But I believeher friendship with Karol showed herthe first vista of the beauty of mathe¬matics.

If one once understands Mathematics

and Physics, one becomes their slaveand lover for the rest of one's life

as did Maria Sklodowska.

When she returned to Warsaw she

worked for some time in the Museum

of Industry and Agriculture. There,under the guidance of her relativeJoseph Boguski, who later became aprofessor at the Warsaw Polytechnic,the young girl enjoyed her first ex¬periments in physics and chemistry.

Because of the disappointment ofher first love, because of her awakenedinterest in Science and because Rus¬

sian universities were closed to women,

Maria decided to go to Paris in 1891and to study there. She intended toreturn to Poland as a qualified teacherin mathematics and physics. Althoughfate interfered with her plans, shewas always in close touch with herfamily and with her country, whichshe visited many times.

IN May 1912, after thedeath of her husband, and after theCuries had received the Nobel Prize,

à Polish delegation was sent to Paris.Among its members was the famouswriter Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of"Ouo Vadis", who urged Maria to re¬turn to Warsaw to continue her scien-

tifio work there.

Maria's daughter writes that it wasa difficult decision for her to take.

But I find this hard to believe.

Warsaw was then a desert as far as

experimental physics was concerned,

and no experimental scientist can work

in a desert. She promised, however, todirect from afar the new laboratorythat was planned and she recommen¬

ded for posts on its staff her two mosttalented Polish students, Jan Danyszand Ludwik Wertenstein.

The laboratory was opened in August1913. Money had been provided byan industrialist who wished the labora¬

tory to be named after his son, a pupilof Maria's in Paris, who had died as

a young man. So the laboratory,named for Dr. Kernbaum, was created,

and for its inauguration Maria visitedPoland and gave a lecture in Polish.

The history of this laboratory,belonging to the " Learned Society ofWarsaw", and the role it played in thescientific development of Polanddeserve a few words.

Jan Danysz, one of the Polish stu¬dents recommended by Maria, waskilled a few years later in the Battleof Verdun. His son is now a distin¬

guished physicist in Warsaw, and isthe co-discoverer, with Jerzy Pniewski,oí the fundamental particles known as

hyperons.

The laboratory was directed by Pro¬fessor Wertenstein, undoubtedly themost distinguished but officially theleast recognized experimental physicistin Poland of the generation betweenthe world wars. It had little or no

State support, though in 1921 it rec¬eived an important grant from Maria.Yet, because of its scientific work and

because of the schooling it gave to afew young scientists, it became knownthroughout the world as the onlylaboratory in which studies on nuclearphysics were kept alive in Poland.

When, after the First World War, a

free Poland was created, Maria dream¬ed of building a big institute inWarsaw devoted to research on radium

and its power for healing. But thenew-born country spent vast sums onits military preparations and it was

left to a specially organized society tocollect money and to present the

Institute as "a national gift" to MariaSklodowska Curie.

In 1925 Maria came to Warsaw to

lay the corner-stone for the laboratorybuilding, and in 1932, when the hospitalat the Institute was finished, Maria

again came to Warsaw to present theInstitute with a gramme or radiumwhich she had received in the U.S.A

Two years later Maria died, andseven years later night fell on Europe.

Science is an international venture.

There is no English, French or PolishScience. But there are contributions

of each country to the development ofscience, usually commemorated bythe names of the men responsible foreach gigantic step forward.

On its way science smashes olddogmas, looking for new truths. Thedogma of the Moving Sun was demo¬lished by the work of Copernicus,Gallileo, Kepler, Newton, Laplace,Einstein. It would be idle to ask who

was the greatest. But the first of themwas Copernicus.

The dogma that the atom is theindivisable, smallest part of matter wassmashed by Pierre and Marie Curie,by Irène and Frederic Jolliot-Curie, bySir Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, anda hundred others who came after

them. But the first were Pierre and

Marie Curie.

Poland can be justly proud to havegiven to the world Copernicus andMaria Sklodowska Curie.

This photo, taken nearGeneva on a misty day in1925, records a meetingbetween two great scientists

Marie Curie and Albert

Einste'n during a breakbetween meetings at theLeague of Nations. In 1922the Council of the Leagueof Nations unanimouslynamed Marie Curie as a

member of the Committee on

Intellectual Co-operation.In this committee she worked

ardently to promote thedevelopment of sciencedevoted to the service of

man (see text page 16).

THE WOMby Marguerite Perey

Marguerite Perey, the distinguishedFrench woman scientist, was a re¬search student of Marie Curie's and

later collaborated with her for some

years. Here she recalls the feelingswhich Marie Curie inspired in all whoworked closely with her, and acknow¬ledges the debt which her own careerin science owes to her illustrious

teacher. Five years after the deathof her "patronne", Marguerite Pereyherself discovered a new radioactive

substance, francium. Today she isprofessor in the Faculty of Science atthe University of Strasbourg, whereshe directs the nuclear research

centre (nuclear chemistry).

I N June 1929, as a shyyoung student not yet

twenty, I had to face an interviewwith Madame Curie, who had askedthe Chemistry School to choose anew graduate to work with her.

I was shown into a cheerless little

waiting-room, where I was quietlyjoined by a lady in black, very paleand frail-looking, with a chignon ofcurly grey hair and thick spectacles.I at first took her for a secretary, but

AN WE CALLED LA PATRONNEto my great confusion, I soon realiz¬ed that I was face to face with

"Madame Curie". We talked for a time,

and I felt I was showing up very badly;then she said, "I will let you know inthe course of the summer whether the

research fellowship has been grantedor not."

I considered this a most polite wayof dismissing me, and gave animmense sigh of relief when I crossedthe threshold of the august institution,for what was, I was convinced, thefirst and last time: I had been struck

by the general dreariness and gloom,and was delighted to think that I hadcertainly forfeited any possibility of asecond visit. I went on holiday witha light heart, until I received a letterfrom the Institut du Radium informingme, to my stupefaction, that thefellowship had been granted, and Iwas to join the Laboratory onOctober 1, 1929. Such was the startof my career in the Curie Laboratory.

Madame Curie herself, the friendlyatmosphere and the fascinating workso completely won me over that thefew months' research work I expectedto put in stretched to twenty years.

In Paris, I first had to be initiatedinto methods of work and scientific

problems of which I was totallyignorant. The big chemistry room,facing the redoutable waiting-room ofmy first visit, looked full Southtowards the garden on the other side.It became a sort of wonderland for

me, thanks to the help and encou¬ragement 1 received from all who

guided my first steps in "Radioactivity"a field which embraced both

chemistry and physics.

Madame Curie loved to have a

happy, young and eager team aroundher, although our eagerness mightsometimes break out in slightly noisy,emphatic or surprising forms.

She loved to mix with us and share

our life. Our favourite meeting-placewas in the passage, facing her officedoor, at the foot of the stairs. We

talked about everything under the sun,whether or not it had any connexionwith our work; but I think the talkopened up vast horizons for us. Weusually ended by discussing somescientific article which had justappeared.

The garden was another spotbeloved of Madame Curie, whereshe liked to work with one of us or

bring us all together. "Her garden"was a very modest affair, betweenthe "Curie Building" and the "PasteurBuilding", where she had plantedlimes and rambler roses when the

Radium Institute was established. It

was furnished with spartan chairs,benches and tables, and Madame

Curie planned any number of experi¬ments with us in the garden, whichshe preferred to her office.

Receptions for guests of honour ornew Doctors of Science were held

there when weather permitted. Weprepared everything ourselves, andtea and ices were served in beakers

with glass rods.

Once I was acclimatized, I wasappointed as assistant to one of theresearch scientists. We worked in the

"Little Building", and I spent yearsbehind its thickly-barred windows,for this isolated building held theprecious, dangerous stocks of radiumand other concentrated radioactive

products.

Madame Curie would often tell me

what results she expected, but I hadto give her the exact results I hadobtained, after repeating each experi¬ment several times. She prized inte¬grity and enthusiasm above all else,and as she trusted me, I very soonhad the immense privilege of work¬ing with her.

Everything needed for a delicateexperiment had to be prepared underher watchful eye, and nothing over¬looked. It was marvellous training toWork under her supervision and benefitfrom her advice and commentary. Itwas an ample reward for quicknessand skill when a substance of a highdegree of purity could be preparedand used.

Marie Curie was the first woman

to be admitted as Professor at the

University. It was in 1906, after thedeath of Pierre Curie, that she foundthe courage to carry on her husband'steaching at the Sorbonne, and pursuetheir researches.

I only knew Marie Curie in her last ..

years, when radiation had already y Xtaken its toll, and she was worn out.Her classes made great demands onher. If there was some special point

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

24

'LA PATRONNE' (Continued)

she wished us to understand, hereven tone would become resonant,

her deathly pallor would light up.

She was obviously most interestedin the experimental periods whichfollowed her classes; but it was withher research team that she showed

herself a surpassing teacher. Sheexacted fervent enthusiasm and

dogged persistence. Those who werenot imbued with the spirit of herlaboratory did not stay long.

I owe an immense debt of gratitudeto Marie Curie. If she realized, when

we were working together, that I hadlost the thread of her explanations,she would go over the ground again,and would tactfully "forget" to checkthe relevant pages in my notebook.But she made sure, during the nextfew days, that I had worked at andfully understood them, before goingon to the next step.

Marie Curie often brought ustogether in the lecture-room, whereone of the team would explain hiswork. In the early days, I found thisa most unusual and arduous exercise,

but Marie Curie could always breathelife into it. She was close enoughto us to understand and feel our joyat success, and our. disappointmentat failure.

To the very end, in spite of alldifficulties, she had the gift of wonder.As she put it, "I am one of those whosee great beauty in science. Ascientist in his laboratory is not a meretechnician; he is also a child watchinga spectacle of natural phenomenawhich move him as deeply as a fairytale. Nor do I believe there is anydanger of the spirit of adventuredying out: the most vital force I seewhen I look around me is that veryspirit of adventure, that indestructibleurge akin to curiosity."

In spite of every care, protectivemeasures were very inadequate atthat time, and the danger of certainsubstances which we often manipu¬lated was still not fully understood.

In June 1934, Madame Curie, alreadyvery ill, was taken to Sancellemoz,where she died on July 4. Her death,which robbed us of "La Patronne,"as we lovingly and deferentially calledher, was a cruel blow.

I have tried to keep faith withMarie Curie, and continue researchin the field she opened up, as I pro¬mised her. Before leaving for San¬cellemoz, she told me to make all

preparations to obtain the emissionspectrum of actinium in ProfessorZeemars' Laboratory at Amsterdam,which had all the necessary apparatus.

I had to get all the products andequipment ready at Amsterdam, andshe was to be there for the experimentwhen the day came . . . The followingautumn, with the help of the lab¬oratory staff, we were able to carryout this experiment by whichMadame Curie set such store, andwhich was, I believe, the culminationof her last experimental work.

RUBEN DARIOand the resurrection of

Hispano-American poetry

Portrait of the great Spanish American poet by José Lamuño.

Collection Luis Felipe Ibarra, Paris

by

Emir Rodriguez Monegal

Acentury has passed since

Rubén Darío was born In a little town

in Central America and during thosehundred years, the child born inMetapa, Nicaragua, has become themost celebrated poet of the Spanish-speaking world, triumphing on bothsides of the Atlantic, and dying at theheight of his fame to become immortalin his verse, with the other greatSpanish poets. During those hundredyears, the antiquated, provincial poetryof a whole continent was changed bythe force of his genius into the new,vigorous poetry of a score of modernpeoples.

When Dario was born, Nicaraguanpoetry was practically non-existent,Spanish American poetry was knownin Spain only to the erudite, thepoetry of Spain itself was dying underthe weight of tradition, lassitude andrepetition. Darío changed all that inthe space of a few years. Stridingfrom Nicaragua to Santiago de Chile,from Chile to Buenos Aires, from theshores of the Plata to Madrid,Darío took the provincial, wandering,sluggish stream of verse and trans¬formed it to a pure current which singsand dances, flaunts its native or bor¬

rowed brilliance, and delights in itsown distinctive music. That music isstill to be heard.

The success of Dario's first notable

works, from Azul ... to Los raros

and Prosas profanas, in the torpidyears of the late nineteenth century,scored a victory for the refinementsof a literature that was deliberatelyand unashamedly literary. Darío (theSpanish American) sang to the mar¬quises and princesses of Versailles,delighted in the' play of words, wasshockingly frivolous.

It was a gentle air, of slow[measures:

the Fairy Harmony timed its[cadences,

and half-formed phrases and gentle[sighs

mingled with the sobs of the['cellos (1).

EMIR RODRIGUEZ MONEGAL, a Uruguyanwriter and journalist, is director of "MundoNuevo" (New World) a Spanish languageliterary review published in Paris. He wasformerly professor of literature at the Uni¬versity of Montevideo.

It is a joy to follow the Intricaciesof the lines which echo with therippling laughter of the MarquesaEulalia. With these and other poems,Darío came to symbolize the emulationof all poets in the New World for theelegance and refinement of themodernists.

At that time, Paris was the capitalof their frivolous, luxurious world:Dario's poetry mirrored as closely asit could the lustre of Paris. Manyeminent critics reproached him forhis gallic mentality, and bade him(with a certain solemn officiousness)return to his own country to describe"the girls of his village," and try toforget Paris "where he had spentperhaps two or three weeks in hislife."

Other critics maintained, on similargrounds, that Dario was not the bardof Spanish America, but merely anuprooted foreigner. Many viewed hispoetry as a mere projection of Ver¬laine and Leconte de Lisle, a strainedadaptation of the inventions of Poeor Mallarmé, the frothy tribute of anadmirer of French exoticism. As a

great Spanish writer put it: "In Darío,you can see the Indian feathersshowing under his hat," implying thathe, like the Indians, was dazzled bythe latest European notions.

But the unjust quip of the greatDon Miguel de Unamuno touches onlythe superficial Darío. His visits toParis, his active Involvement with the

diplomatic world, his thirst for luxuryand worldly success, seemed to justifysuch strictures. Darío gave theimpression of being the typical LatinAmerican poet, stifling in our rudelands, who cannot abide the "crass

municipal" populace (as he oncecalled it), and has no aptitude forpaying tribute to a new-born demo¬cracy or a President of a Republic.

This incomplete, synthetic, fancifulimage was thus imposed on manycritics and readers. Darío himself

gave it currency, with a mixture ofamusement and childish impudence.He wished to outdo the subtle in

subtlely, explore the farthest bounds

(1) Era un aire suave, de pausados giros:el Hada Armonía ritmaba sus vuelos,e iban frases vagas y tenues suspirosentre los sollozos de los violoncelos.

of the decadent civilization of his time,and he loved to scandalize the worthybourgeoisie of Latin America. Hewrote defiantly in his introduction toProsas profanas:

"Is there a drop of African, Cho-rotegan or Nagrandanian Indianblood In my veins? There may be,in spite of my aristocrat's hand;but Io! my verses sing of princesses,kings, empires, visions of far-off orimpossible countries. What wouldyou? . I detest the life and timesI chanced to be born to; and I can¬not acclaim a President of the Repu¬blic in the tongue in which I wouldsing to thee, O Halagaball whosecourt of gold, silk and marble I visitin my dreams ..."

Ihose who regarded Darío

as a mere imitator of the French school

overlooked his other achievements,which were perhaps more importantthan the trivial aping of Verlaine orBanville. Darío came to Latin Amer¬

ican literature at the critical moment

in the development of a new culturaltradition. For nearly a century, thatliterature had been struggling to attainan identity to match the continent'spolitical independence. The romantics(who flourished practically throughoutthe nineteenth century) were suc¬ceeded by the "fin-de-siècle" poets,who struck the first blows, in theirseparate countries, for more subtleand flexible verse, freer utterance,newer and bolder images.

They were Mexican, like SalvadorDíaz Mirón and Manuel Gutiérrez

Nájera, Cuban, like Julián del Casaland José Martí, Colombian like JoséAsunción Silva or Salvadorian like

Francisco Gavidia. Each played his, part in renovating the Spanish lan¬guage and Spanish verse; but the onlyone who was acquainted with themall, learnt from them all and surpassedthem all was Rubén Darío.

Genius that he was, he absorbed

the spirit of different generations of __poets and fused their many tongues J*\into the unique, matchless, highly ^distinctive voice of one poet: RubénDarío. This was his first feat: to

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

RUBEN DARIO (Continued)

The birth of a new idiom :

the haunting music of the soul

convert the speech of a scattered tribeinto an individual poetic utterance.

His second feat was equal to thefirst: he succeeded» in imbuing other,younger poets with the new spirit;his genius embodied it in a languagecommon to a whole rising generation.It was shaped in Santiago de Chile,spread to Buenos Aires, and triumphedin Madrid. Darío returned to the

fountain-head (like a modern conquis¬tador whose caravels were to reverse

the course of history); he came toSpain to restore to its poetry andlanguage the life, force and gracewhich they lacked.

The younger Spanish poets werethe first to acknowledge the master,and joyfully harnessed themselves tohis triumphal chariot. Antonio Ma¬chado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Ramóndel Valle Inclán, adopted this LatinAmerican as their guide and paidhomage to him in their verses.Before Darío came on the scene,

these young poets were gagged bythe prevailing mediocrity. Then Daríosauntered in smiling, to open newvistas, lighten the prose, electrify theverse.

What Darío, the "Indian", brought toSpain was not the gallic idiom, as theolder critics complained, but themodern idiom: a new idiom of his own

invention, and yet as old as the lan¬guage spoken in Spain at the conquestof the New World; the speech he learntas a child in Nicaragua, sharing thesame roots with all its sister langua¬ges; the Spanish American tongue.

D

26

ario came home like the

prodigal son, with no riches but hiswords. He thus returned to the source,and brought the mother country thelanguage preserved in America by thesons of the conquistadors. Thetreasures displayed by this "Indian"were intangible, yet they were aprecious cargo: each word was new,and yet immeasurably old.

Those who still accused him of

triviality did not look below theiridescent surface of his verse. In

truth; Darío is much more earnestthan he seems, and the poet'sfundamental gravity underlies many ofhis poems about flirtatious Marquisesand sorrowful princesses. He lovedto juggle with lines, rhythms andrhymes, but behind the façade lay apassionate, tragic soul.

His passionate side was obviousand easy to copy. His gallant exploitswent the round of the literati; theyall knew of his escapades, his mar¬riages, his many muses of flesh andblood. And there was much talk of

his artificial paradises. The legendswere no doubt exaggerated, but thepoet's fame was not solely compound

ed of truth; falsehood also playedits part.

In reality, Dario was no Don Juan:he was a headstrong, vulnerable man,who could be possessed or evenswept away by love. Any number ofhis poems, singing of the joy andsorrow of love, are familiar to all

admirers of poetry. He once con¬fessed:

Like an unbridled colt my instincts[galloped;

My youth rode an unbridled colt;Intoxicated, with a dagger at the

[waist;If I did not come to grief, it was by

[God's good grace.

In my garden stood a beautiful[statue;

It seemed of marble, but was of[living flesh ;

A youthful soul within,Sentimental, sensitive, sensuous (2).

For many years, readers and criticsclosed their eyes to any image ofDarío but that of the victor, spendinghis life in the pursuit of pleasure andthe capture of applause. But another,very different image lay behind.Masked by the harmony of this versesis a poet who suffers and is dyingby inches. One of his most hauntingpoems brings us face to face withthe reality: it shows him clinging tolife, passionately hugging it, whileDeath inexorably draws near. Thepoem is Lo fatal (The Inevitable).

Happy the tree almost bereft of[feeling;

Happier still the rock, impenetrable,[insensitive;

No greater pain than that of being[alive;

No greater sorrow than to live and[feel.

To exist and to know nothing, to[have no set course;

To tremble at the thought of life's[quick ebb,

And the terrifying certainty of death[tomorrow;

To suffer for life and for the

[shadow.

For the unknown or the dimly[conjectured;

To feel the temptations of the[flesh, sweet and tendril-like,

And the cold tomb crowned with

[funeral wreaths,And not to know where we are

[bound, nor whence we came . . . I (3)

His biographers explain that atthat time, Dario was disintegratingphysicaly, drinking himself to death,dissolving into nothingness, a processsublimated Into pure poetry. Daríohad discovered that the flesh is stub¬

born and does not want to die, and

that the infinite patience of Death is

a pure fiction. Death consumes usimplacably day by day; Death shapesand overshadows our lives. And in

his verses even the best, the most

mournfully melodious he is tracingthe progress of Death's invasion andvictory.

Thus, Dario's third great feat wasto attain this profound insight for theSpanish and American verse of histime. Like every authentic creator,Dario was constantly at odds with histime. The conflict had its vicissitudes,

periods of peace and even suddengleams of cheerful harmony; but everyvictory in the long struggle compro¬mised his closest links with his envi¬

ronment.

At one time, the Spanish

language seemed threatened by hisgallicisms and thirst for modernity. Atother times, bourgeois conventionswere endangered by the white-hotpassion of his poetry. He sometimesoffended the most sensitive politicalsusceptibilities, which can influencethe destiny of a whole continent.

For that reason he lived much of his

life as a fugitive. Although firmlyrooted in the land and language of hischildhood, although he had coveredthe whole of Latin America in his

triumphal progress, Darío lived a largepart of his life in exile in Paris, andbecame a cosmopolitan. Only thuscould he become still more deeply,more tragically Spanish American.

Up to the very end of his life hetook no respite, but went on seekingand fighting. Death, which finallyvanquished him one day in 1916, didnot have an easy victory. The poetrefused to yield an inch without astruggle, a cry, a lament. Long afterhis death, his poetry (and the poet'saspirations) live on.

(2) Potro sin freno se lanzó mi instinto,mi juventud montó potro sin freno;iba embriagada y con puñal al cinto,si no cayó, fue porque Dios es bueno.En mi jardín se vio una estatua bella;se juzgó mármol y era carne viva;

una alma joven habitaba en ella,sentimental, sensible y sensitiva.

(3) Dichoso el árbol que es apenas sensitivo,y más la piedra dura, porque ésta ya no

[sientepues no hay dolor más grande que el

[dolor de ser vivo,ni mayor pesadumbre que la vida cons¬

ciente.Ser, y no saber nada, y ser sin rumbo

[cierto,y el temor de haber sido y un futuro

[terror...y el espanto seguro de estar mañana

[muerto,y sufrir por la vida, y por la sombra y

[porlo que no conocemos y apenas sospe¬

chamos,y la carne que tienta con sus frescos

[racimosy la tumba que aguarda con sus fúnebres

[ramos,y no saber adonde vamos,ni de dónde venimos...!

GREAT MEN

GREAT EVENTS

Michael

Faraday

THE distinguished British scientist Sir Humphrey Davy was

once asked what he considered his greatest discovery."Michael Faraday," was his answer. The son of a blacksmith,Faraday (1791-1867) had little formal education, but as a book¬binder's apprentice, he became fascinated by the scientifictreatises in the books he bound. He devoured this knowledge,attended scientific lectures and at the age of 22, was engagedas laboratory assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy at the RoyalInstitution in London. Thereafter, he was to perform experi¬ments which yielded some of the most significant inventionsand principles in scientific history. He built the first rotaryelectric motor (1821), the first transformer and the first dynamo(both in 1831). Every generator, every electric motor andtransformer, every one of the innumerable pieces of electricequipment all over the world operates today because of Fara¬day's work in electromagnetism. Faraday also made notablecontributions to chemistry, including the liquifying of gases byuse of pressure and the discovery of benzine. His laws ofelectrolysis linked chemistry and electricity and paved the wayfor today's electro-plating industry. Faraday's outstandingachievement was the discovery of electromagnetic induction:that moving a magnet rapidly near a coil of wire produces anelectric current. A lady who saw his perform the experimentasked, "But, Professor Faraday, even if the effect you explainedis obtained, what is the use of it?" "Madam", replied Faraday,"will you tell me the use of a new-born child?"

Johann

Bernoulli

B«FORN in 1667, Johann Bernoulli, the distinguished Swissmathematician, came from a family which left Antwerp toescape religious persecution and settled in Basle. Over thenext two centuries, the family produced so many scientiststhat encyclopedias'today distinguish them by putting a numberbeside their christian names, as in the case of kings. Thename of Johann Bernoulli, however, stands out above the rest.

As a young man he held a minor post in commerce and thenstudied mathematics and medicine. In 1694 he was awarded

his doctorate at the University of Basle and the following yearbecame a professor at the University of Groningen. His nextpost was at the University of Basle where he succeeded hisbrother Jacob (a mathematician celebrated for his work on thedifferential and integral calculus). A friend of Leibnitz, JohannBernoulli discovered the exponential calculus and was the firstscientist to determine the line of swiftest descent followed bya body. Before he died in 1748, Johann Bernoulli trained anumber of young men who were also to become eminent inscience his sons Nicholas I, Daniel and Johann II, and LeonardEuler. AH four made important contributions to the develop¬ment of mathematics and physics.

Jonathan

Swift

J,IONATHAN Swift(1 667-1 745) was one of the greatest satiristsof all time and one of the most misunderstood. Many people,not seeing what lies behind the savage irony of his work,have represented him as harsh and misanthropic. Yet thevenom of Swift's pen contrasts sharply with the humanityand charity he showed to friends, relatives and the poor.He left all his modest fortune to build and endow a hospitalfor lunatics, idiots and, as he put it, "those they call incurable."Even his greatest work, "Gulliver's Travels," intended as aferocious indictment of human nature, delighted the worldinstead of shocking it. The strange lands visited by Gulliverhad much in common with the countries Swift knew. The

tiny Lilliputians had the vices and weaknesses of ordinarymen. In the island of Laputa, where "wise" men wereengaged on fantastic projects, Swift parodied some of thescientists and philosophers of his own day. Born in Dublin ofEnglish parents, Swift was educated in Ireland where he enteredthe church in 1695. The country vicar gradually became wellknown through the writing of minor political tracts, but thepublication of "Tale of a Tub" made him famous overnight.This satire on humanity in general and the church in particular,and "The Battle of the Books," a parody of literary controversy(both published in 1704) are still read for their comic commen¬tary on human stupidity. With the "Drapiers Letters" (1724).Swift foiled the British Government in its attempts to impose adebased currency on Ireland, and five years later he publishedperhaps his most terrible satiric pamphlet, "A Modest Propo¬sal" that the people of Ireland eat their children as the onlyway to keep England from starving them to death. Swiftcontinued to defend Ireland's cause and for the rest of his

life he was the idol of the Irish people.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

27

GREAT MEN, GREAT EVENTS (Continued)

28

José Enrique

Rodo

A,IMONG the score of brillant literary figures flourishing inUruguay at the turn of the century, the one who best embodiesthe hopes and ideals of the times is the essayist andphilosopher Jose Henrique Rodó (1872-1917). A mostly self-taught scholar, Rodó managed to reflect his vast culture andlove of beauty in a prose of extraordinary flexibility andelegance, ill reflected in most of the translations of his works.Rubén Dario, whose genius Rodó was one of the first torecognize, was to say of him: "José Enrique Rodó is theSpanish-American thinker of our times. . . I would say thathe is a sort of Latin Emerson, with a serenity originating inGreece." For all his love of ancient Greece, Rodó had theFrench philosopher Fenan for an ideological model. His ownlife oddly resembles that of his master. But in a literarymagazine of which he was a co-founder in 1895, he became fromthe start a penetrating critic of the new Spanish writing. Heanalyzed and praised the work of the young Spanish-Americanpoets. "Ariel," a call to a new idealism published in 1900,when the clouds of social change and revolution were alreadygathering in the European skies, was a lesson on democracyaddressed to the Spanish-American youth; it is interestingto note it has lately had quite a revival. The beginning ofthe century was a time of social reforms, the heyday of theliberalism and the moderation of which Rodó became a

champion. A plea for the protection of child labour madea sensation in 1903, when he wrote a study on workingconditions in Uruguay. In 1909, Rodó published his master¬piece, "Motives of Proteus": meditations, parables, aphorismsand maxims whose central theme is the lifelong evolution ofman and his need to direct it through self-knowledge.

Georg Philipp

Telemann

S,MX thousand works, including 44 Passions, 100 oratorios,40 operas and 12 cycles of cantatas, each of 52 workscomposed the voluminous musical heritage left by Georg PhilippTelemann, a gifted musician and the most prolific composerof 18th century Germany. Born in Magdeburg in 1681, hecomposed his first opera at the age of 12, an accomplishmentthat displeased his parents who planned to make a lawyerof this born musician. Aged 27 and already famous, he wasappointed as Kapellmeister at Eisenach where he met JohannSebastian Bach, became his friend and was later godfatherto Bach's son, Karl Philipp Emanuel. When Telemann diedin 1767 at the age of 86, his godson succeeded him as directorof church music in Hamburg. At that time Telemann's musicwas admired in every part of Europe. But his works weresoon forgotten and some fifty years later Franz Schubertcondemned the world's neglect of a composer who heconsidered as "a master among the masters". Today Telemannis acknowledged as an innovator who was able to infuseinto the new classicism all the grace and vigour of Baroquemusic.

Nicolai

Lobachevsky

FcOR centuries the world's basic textbook on geometry wasthe "Elements" of the Greek mathematician Euclid written

about 320 B.C. For nearly 2,000 years no one presumed toquestion Euclid's famous postulate that only one line parallelto a given line can be drawn through a fixed point. The manwho challenged this by advancing his own "scandalous"postulate that there are two parallels to the given line throughany fixed point was the Russian . mathematician NikolaiLobachevsky (1792-1856), who founded the new school of"hyperbolic" or "non Euclidean" geometry. Lobachevsky'sentire academic life was linked with the University of Kazan(a city on the Volga, and today capital of the Tatar Republic)where he was a student, then a teacher and finally rector.His searching mind was to question not only long-acceptedscientific beliefs but also, and as a result, some of thefoundations of the philosophy of idealism which affirmed thea priori character of Euclidean ideas, without foreseeing thatthis could ever be contradicted. Lobachevsky announced hisfirst studies on the new system of geometry in 1826 (when hewas 34) and completed it in 1855. Conceived and developedindependently, it agreed with conclusions reached by theGerman mathematician Frederic Gauss and by the HungarianJanos Bolyai. The name of Lobachevsky thus remainsinseparably associated with non-Euclidean geometry and witha striking revolution in human thought.

Petr

Bezruc

|N his homeland, Czechoslovakia, Petr Bezruc is one of thebest known and appreciated of poets, and some of hispoems have been translated into many languages. The poet'sreal name was Vladimir Vasek. Petr Bezruc was the pseu¬donym under which he wrote verses extolling the Czechstruggle for national rights and denouncing the social, economicand ethnic oppression of his people by the Austro-Hungarianempire. Petr Bezruc was born in Opava, Silesia, in 1867. Hisfather, Antonin Vasek, a schoolmaster and journalist, was oneof the Czech nationalists whose struggle against Habsburgdomination grew sharper towards the end of the 19th century.Petr Bezruc's first verses were published in 1899 and manyof his poems were later collected in book form as "SilesianSongs" (a selection translated into English was published byArtia, Prague, in 1966). He was not a professional poet in thesense of having literary aspirations. As he once put it: "Yearafter year, the immense oppression weighed upon me... so Iwrote down these few poems to give voice to that oppression.If they have had effect it is only the truth of rattling chains."

Vicente

Blasco Ibanez

V ÍCENTE Blasco Ibañez, born in Valencia, Spain, in 1867,started writing' at the age of 12. At 14, he was alreadycompleting, in Madrid, the works of a novelist who had engagedhim as his secretary. His youth was marked by incessantpamphleteering and political protest, which forced him twice toflee Spain and took him to jail about 30 times. He also waselected six times to the Spanish Cortes. In 1909, tired ofpolitics, he went to Argentina, whose scene was to inspirethree of his most famous novels. One of them, "The FourHorsemen of the Apocalypse," published in 1914 more as ananticipation than an actual comment on the world conflict, wasthe first international success among modern war novels,opening to him the doors of the American literary market andHollywood fame. Blasco Ibañez died a millionaire. He wroteno less than 30 novels which reveal his talent for creatingcharacters and his gift for conducting narrative action.

Charles

Baudelaire

THE "case" of Baudelaire is unique in the history of literaturealready rich In examples of misunderstanding and dramaticreversals of opinion. Charles Baudelaire, one of the greatestnames in French poetry, gained the recognition refused himin his lifetime long after his death in 1867. Born in 1821, hebegan to write at an early age. Among the poems in LesFleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), a collection published In1857, are some he wrote In 1842 and 1843. The book causeda scandal and Baudelaire was prosecuted for offending againstpublic morals. Although such literary giants as Victor Hugoand Théophile Gautier recognized in Baudelaire a writer ofstartling originality, the poet's works were scorned by thecritics in vogue and he was wantonly vilified. It was perhapèless his private life (somewhat wild and unrestrained for hisday) than the profound distress that imbued his poems and hisdiscovery of "modernity" (a word he coined) which earnedhim the suspicion and hatred of contemporary society. Thatsociety had no wish to question any of the established socialor literary norms nor to consider the possibility of themetamorphosis of such values. Baudelaire created a newpoetical art that was to make its impact on French literatureand prepare the way for Rimbaud and Mallarmé. A brilliantcritic he drew attention to new aesthetic values in many fields.In literature, for example, he revealed to his countrymen theworks of Edgar Allan Poe, in French versions that aremasterpieces of the translator's art. In music he analyzedthe revolutionary innovations of Richard Wagner. In painting,his studies on Eugène Delacroix, Constantine Guys, Daumierand Edouard Manet brought out the meaning of the new tonesand forms In colour and drawing. Baudelaire's personaljournals speak of his prolonged sufferings and his solitudefrom which a serious illness delivered him in 1867.

Luigi

Pirandello

F OR nearly half a century, the name of Luigi Pirandellodominated Italian Letters. When Pirandello was awarded the

Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, two years before his death,he had become a world-famous dramatist who had given thetheatre a new psychological dimension. Born in 1867 atAgrigente in Sicily, he first taught Italian literature in Romeand began publishing short stories and novels in 1893. Manyof these deal with the lower middle class milieu or the farmingcommunities in Sicily. Though Pirandello wrote some300 stories and six novels, his work as a novelist has been

somewhat obscured by his fame as a playwright, though heused the same themes in both media. Novels such as "The

Late Mattia Pascal" (1904) reveal the same irony, the samecompassion that inspired the author to create the contradictoryand vacillating characters found in many of his plays.Pirandello's main themes are the necessity and vanity ofillusion, the multiform appearances, all of them unreal, of whatis presumed to be the truth; man is not what he thinks he is,but he Is "one, no one and a hundred thousand" (the title ofa Pirandello novel) according as he appears to differentpersons, and is always different from what he creates himselfin his own mind. Pirandello's plays have been translated intomany languages, and have taken their places among themasterpieces of the modern theatre.

A

60th anniversary of the use of

Arabic in Egyptian schools

RABIC is today a language fully adapted to the needs of .the 20th century with an abundant vocabulary of technologicaland scientific terms which, as it continues to expand, constantlyadds new, expressive terms to the language of the Koran.Scientific works, technical manuals, books and reviews onscience are written in Arabic or translated Into it. The up-to-date vocabulary of the spoken word, with its mobility,inventiveness and imagery is being grafted on to the traditionalwritten language, bringing with it the new ideas of the atomicage and the era of space exploration. The swift renovation ofArabic io all the more remarkable In view of the decline it

suffered for four centuries following the invasion of Egypt bythe Turks in 1517. Until the beginning of the 19th centuryTurkish replaced Arabic which thus was in danger of becominga dead language. Since the first Arabic language universitywas created in Egypt sixty years ago and the use of Arabicwas established for schools, the press and governmentservices, the language has recovered its vigour and powersof adaptability. The Unesco General Conference in 1966decided to add Arabic to English, French, Spanish and Russianas a working language of Unesco.

Photo Unesco-G. Böhm

THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME

A new form of aid for developmentby Colin Mackenzie

30

ODERN international aid,

in the years since the discovery thatwealth can be shared without too much

risk, with honour and indeed with pro¬

fit, has come to assume varied forms.

Cash of course predominates for, asSchopenhauer once remarked, moneyis the one thing which is not only aconcrete satisfaction of one need in

particular, but an abstract satisfactionof all. In addition, however, there is

a wide variety of material and equip¬ment. There is also technical advice

experts of one kind and anotherspread around the developing coun¬tries armed with anything from syringesto theodolites. And now, as a rela¬

tively new form of aid, there is food.

Relatively new? After all, as longago as the third century B.C., Hleron II,Tyrant of Syracuse, sent grain to Egyptin time of famine. Yes, but food aid

today is something rather different. Itis not merely concerned with the feed¬ing of hungry people, for, in the con¬text of the looming world food crisis,such a course would be not only

completely insignificant in relation tothe size of the problem but also totallyirrelevant to the need for curing thebasic economic malaise which has

caused it. Food aid, like other forms

of modern aid, is intended to producesomething more tangible and materiallylasting than the prospect of a descentof blessings on the givers.

To get an idea of food in action asa stimulus to a country's economic andsocial development, one needs to lookat some of the projects that the WorldFood Programme (W.FP) is aiding.

In the north of Morocco, some

30,000 children are being fed in pri¬mary and secondary schools in seve¬ral areas, with the result that enrol¬

ment is up by 15 to 20 per cent. Thismeans that one day there may be justthat many more doctors or administra

tors or engineers in Morocco thanthere would otherwise have been.

In 1964, the Programme investedsome $300,000 to help in thereclamation of land in the Republic ofChina. The food was distributed for

two years to settlers while they wentabout preparing the land and sowingtheir crops. Now, 2,500 hectares(6,200 acres) of wasteland have beentransformed into prosperous farmswhose annual production will be worthfive times the original investment offood.

In Columbia, inhabitants of some ofthe poorer city suburbs have workedafter hours paving their own streets.Their incentive and to some extent

their compensation was the food sup¬plied by the Programme.

In one village in Senegal, one tonof couscous made from WFP sorghum

was used to mobilize enough people toclear and plant enough land to pro¬duce 45 tons of rice.

Ihese are a few small in¬

stances taken at random from the 230-

odd projects that have been approvedsince the Programme started opera¬tions at the beginning of 1963. Therange of development activities it hasaided is very wide.

There have been projects for feed¬ing, not only school-children and stu¬dents, but also expectant and nursingmothers and children still too youngto go to school all this investment incountries' future resources in human

skills.

The Programme has helped toresettle Bedouins in the Middle East,

refugees in Africa and communitiesthreatened with inundation after the

building of the Aswan Dam. With the

food it has supplied, previously unem¬ployed (or underemployed) rural wor¬kers have set to work planting new ormore abundant forests, particularly insorely eroded areas around the Medi¬terranean where there are the ravagesof 2,000 or 3,000 years to be repaired.It provides animal feed to help fattenand multiply a country's livestock.

There is a $10,000,000 project to im¬prove milk supplies in India. Roadshave been built in one instance, in an

island off Korea, linking up 95 isolatedvillages. There are projects in Tur¬key to» help feed workers in someindustries and mines and thus boost

productivity. WFP food has been usedas part payment of the wages of wor¬kers repairing the famous HedjazRailway that runs from Damascus to

Medina and was originally builtlargely to carry Moslem pilgrims.

A point to be remembered about the

Programme's assistance to countriesin their pursuit of economic and social

development is that it is only assis¬tance. It has been found that, on aver¬

age, something like 80 per cent ofthe costs of projects is borne by thecountries themselves. WFP aid is

often primarily a stimulus, the extraincentive that makes the difference

between whether a project is startedor not.

It was said earlier that merely feed¬ing the hungry is not enough. Butthere are of course times of dire emer¬

gency when not feeding the hungrywould also be less than enough. Thatis why the Programme, with the stocksof food it has at its disposal, alsocomes to the aid of victims of emer¬

gencies, whether these are sudden,unforeseeable catastrophes like hurri¬

canes, typhoons, earthquakes and vol¬

canic eruptions or the slowly punishingravages of a long drought.

Emergency operations, however, are

'Ifv',. >. " -rfft

l«\*.¿**H# .

Photo © H. W. Silvester

not the primary aim of the Programme,and so far never more than about a

quarter of its resources have been

allocated to them in any one year. Thesuccess of the operations has varied

inversely with the size of the emergencyand the number of victims. In Bots¬

wana, where there was a prolonged

drought, food supplies at a total costof less than $5.5 million helped to keep

the entire country going for severalmonths when things were at theirworst. On the other hand, more than

$13.5 million spent in the last year orso on sending food to the drought-stricken areas of India, including thestates of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, has

had little impact on so wide a sweep

of suffering.

The fact is that the resources

of the World Food Programme,as yet, are totally inadequate formeeting any kind of famine on thescale that now seems to threaten.

What are these resources? And,

indeed, how did the World Food Pro¬

gramme come into being at all?

The story probably goes back tothe 1930s, when for the first time

people were struck by the disquietingphenomenon of a glut of huge, waste

ful agricultural surpluses in some coun¬tries (notably the United States,although in Brazil too, for example,75 million bags of coffee had to beburned during the period) while massesof people in other areas of the worldwent hungry. It was the pressure to'find an outlet for surpluses that origi¬nally prompted the idea of food aid.

From the end of the Second World

War, the U.N. Food and AgricultureOrganization (FAO) worked hard onthe problem of surplus disposal, butthe most important large-scale initia¬tive for putting food aid into practicewas taken by the United States in1954 with the passage of an Actusually known as Public Law 480 asa result of which $13,000 million worth

of surplus agricultural commoditieswere shipped to other countries in thedecade that followed.

By this time, however, the idea ofdevelopment aid on the multilateralpattern was gaining ground, especiallyfollowing the heavy influx of newly-independent nations into the councilsof the United Nations and its Specia¬

lized Agencies.

So the two trends a constructive

method of surplus disposal and thenew emphasis on multilateral aid

merged. At the end of 1961, follow¬ing studies carried out by FAO at theUnited Nations' request, parallel reso¬lutions in the two organizations set upthe World Food Programme on anexperimental three-year basis with atarget of $100 million in commoditiesand cash. Thus the Programme,which formally started operations onJanuary 1, 1963, is the child of both

the United Nations, with its generalconcern for economic and social dev¬

elopment, and FAO, with its specialcompetence in matters connected withfood.

By the end of 1965 when the ex¬

perimental period was drawing to aclose, the Programme had sufficientlyproved itself for the United Nations andFAO to decide to continue it "for as

long as multilateral food aid is foundfeasible and desirable." Despite thefact that by its nature the Programmeis meant to be only a preliminaryto plenitude, this looks like being forsome while yet.

The Programme lives by pledges ofcommodities and cash from its parti¬

cipating countries participation is

31

THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME (Continued)

32

open to all Members of the UnitedNations or FAO. The proportion istwo-thirds in commodities food and

animal feed,, with cereals heavily pre¬

dominating and one-third in cash orservices such as shipping. Duringthe 1963-5 experimental period, the

target of $100 million was very nearlyfully subscribed. For the new three-year pledging period 1966-8, a muchhigher target was set $275 million.This time the response in pledges hasbeen 'proportionately much lower theresources at present available to theProgramme are worth less than$60 million a year, a figure whichshould be set against the annual$1,500 million to $2,000 million which

represents the totality of food aid inrecent years.

In comparing these figures, it shouldonce again be remembered that thereis a growing preference for multila¬teral aid not only among the dev¬eloping countries which would therebyhave a greater say in events, but also,in the case of food aid, among someof the major donors which would liketo see the burden more evenly shared.

It may thus be that the Programme willbe allotted a really sizeable part ofthe extra 4.5 million tons of food aid

that was agreed on in the closing daysor nights of the Kennedy Round

negotiations, and also that futurepledging targets and, even more per¬tinently, the pledges themselves willin the 1970s go sufficiently beyond the$200 million now proposed for the two-

year period 1969-70 to enable the Pro¬gramme to measure up more adequa¬tely for its part to the trials awaitingthe international community.

The curious might, still inquire howthe Programme actually handles thefood it already has. The answer issimple in general terms, but extremelycomplicated in practice. Everythingmust begin with a country's request foraid which, in the case of developmentprojects, is submitted to a formidable

process of scrutiny by the ExecutiveDirector and his staff in Rome and bywhichever of the co-operating inter¬national organizations is concernedUnesco in the case, for example, ofa school-feeding project. The preli¬

minaries for emergency operationswhich have to be authorized by theFAO Director-General are naturallymuch more summary.

Among the most strenuous com¬plications are those of earmarkingand allocating the variety of food-

U. N. Photo

Tuna fishermen off the coast of Ceylon.

stuffs from the large number ' ofcountries which have pledged them tothe variety of projects or emergency

operations needing them and in thequantities and units in which they areneeded. At the end of 1966, about

40 countries had pledged food andWFP was operating in about 50. Inaddition, unless a donor country pro¬

vides its own shipping, the Programmehas to organize transport of the goods,including insurance, to the recipientcountry. The World Food Programmeis very much a business operation.

So, from what was originally theproblem of how to make the best use

of unwanted agricultural surpluses hasgrown a new form of aid for develop¬ment in the long-term interests of all.The need is great, but so are the po¬tentialities. It is worth recalling whatJohn F. Kennedy once said, even before

he became U.S. President, addressinga farm audience at Mitchell, South

Dakota, in the late fifties. "I don't

regard the . . . agricultural surplus asa problem," he declared. "I regard itas an opportunity." For, he affirmed,

"...food Is strength, and food ispeace, and food is freedom, and food

is a helping hand to people aroundthe world ..."

From the Unesco New:

World's first 'International

Literacy Day' and theReza Pahlavi Literacy Prize

The world's first 'International LiteracyDay', was celebrated on September 8 inall Unesco's member states. On this oc¬

casion, Mr René Maheu, speaking at Expo67 in Montreal, and U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, called for

an international effort in support of theglobal fight against illiteracy. On Septem¬ber 7, Mr Maheu presided at the presen¬tation of the first Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Literacy Prize, during a ceremony held atUnesco H.Q. in Paris. The $5,000 prize,contributed by His Imperial Majesty theShahinshah of Iran, was awarded to stu¬dents of the Girls Secondary School atTabora, Tanzania, who as volunteer teachersvisited homes and community centres to

give literacy teaching to more than 400people. Their example has encouragedstudents In other Tanzanian secondaryschools to start adult literacy classes.Since 1964 Tanzania has developed literacyprogrammes as part of its national develop¬ment plan. By January 1965, 7,257 classeswere operating, attended by over 540,000adults, of whom about two-thirds werewomen.

Visitor from

outer space

A meteorite in two main pieces, one

weighing 12 tons and the other about 3found in a remote part of Western Australia,is Australia's largest meteorite and theeleventh largest found in the world.Geophysicists believe this visitor from outerspace is 93 per cent iron and nearly 7 percent nickel, that it crashed to earth tensof thousands of years ago and probablycame from an asteroid belt between the

planets Jupiter and Mars.'

140,000 U.S.-internationaleducational exchanges

Over 140,000 persons college anduniversity students, teachers and scholarswere Involved in educational exchangebetween the U.S. and 172 other countries

and territories in 1966-67, according to"Open Doors" 1967, the annual survey ofeducational exchange statistics publishedby the Institute of International Education,New York. This record figure included atotal of 100,262 students from abroadenrolled In 1,797 U.S. institutions of higherlearning, which also were hosts to morethan 10,700 professors, scholars andresearchers from a record 118 countries.

Associated schools and

the Marie Curie centenaryTo mark the centenary of the birth of

Marie Curie, Polish schools which aremembers of the Unesco Associated Schools

project have prepared materials on her life

and work for the schools abroad that theycorrespond with. A suggestion by thePolish National Commission for Unesco has

led to the "twinning" of the Marie Sklodow-ska-Curie School in Lublin with the LycéeMarie Curie at Sceaux, near Paris.

A U.S. Directoryof Correspondence Courses

Determining the quality of correspondencecourses before enrolling is usually difficult.Private correspondence schools in theU.S.A. which meet certain high standardsare accredited by the National Home StudyCouncil which is recognized by the U.S.Office of Education as an accrediting

agency. Anyone can obtain a free copy ofa "Directory" which lists accredited schoolsand courses they offer by writing to theNational Home Study Council, 1601 18thStreet, N.W., Washington D.C. 20009,U.S.A.

New Soviet vessels

for 'World Weather Watch'

The Soviet Union is building about tennew research ships some of which willsupply vital data for the World WeatherWatch programme during its first phase1968-71. The programme calls for at leastseven new weather ship stations to fill"gaps" in the southern hemisphere. TheSoviet ships are expected also to under¬take important work in oceanography,communications data, processing, fore¬casting and, especially, storm warnings.As ocean areas cover 70 per cent of thesurface of the globe and are poorly servedby meteorological stations, the weatherwatch programme will also make more useof merchant shipping for obtainingobservations.

Saving grain bynuclear radiation

The world's first plant for saving grainby using nuclear radiation to kill insectpests is installed at Iskenderun, Turkey.Grain from large hoppers falls past apowerful source of radioactive cobaltwhose gamma radiation sterilizes the insectsin the grain. A degree of protection isthus given against reinfestation by the samespecies. World grain losses through in¬sects total some 5 per cent of all grainproduced; the amount lost each year couldfeed 100 million people.

Floating laboratoryfor ocean research

A new ocean research vessel, the

"Oceanographer" has been launched inthe U.S.A. Designed to stay at sea forfive months at a time, the ship has over4,000 square feet of laboratory space, anda computer capable of 10,000 operationsa second. The computer will be used tosort, analyze and store data on temper¬atures, sediments, currents and other mari¬time phenomena.

BOOKSHELF

UNESCO'S TRANSLATION SERIES

Japan

Japan's First Modern Novel:"Ukigumo" of Futabatei Shimei

Translation and critical commentaryby Marieigh Grayer Ryan.Columbia University Press, New Yorkand London, 1967 ($10.00).

Pakistan

B Tree Without Roots

By Syed WaliullahA novel from the Bengali, translatedby Qaisar Saeed, Anne Marie-Thi-baud and Malik Khayyam. Chattoand Windus, London, 1967 (21/-).

China

Fifty Songs from the Yuan(Poetry of 13th Century China)

Translated and with an introduction

by Richard F.S. Yang and CharlesR. Metzger. George Allen and Un¬win Ltd, London, 1967 (35/-).

In the U.S., the Unesco PublicationsCenter, 317, East 34th Street, NewYork, can supply all the abovevolumes.

Brazil

La Vengeance de l'Arbreet Autres Contes

By José Monteiro LobatoA collection of stories originallyentitled "Urupês".Translated from the Portuguese intoFrench by Georgette Tavares Bastos.Editions Universitaires, Paris, 1967(18.50 F)-

Glossary of Linguistic Terminology

By Mario PeiAn Anchor Original book, Doubledayand Company, Inc., New York, 1966(paperback: $1.95).

A Guide to Book-Publishing

By Datus C. Smith, Jnr.RR. Bowker Co., New York, 1966($6.00).

Miracles

(Poems by children of theEnglish-speaking world)

Collected by Richard LewisSimon and Shuster, New York, 1966($4.95).

Pakistan

Edited by Ibnul Hasan with a fore-ward by Mumtaz Hasan, S. Pk.United Advertisers, 12-A, Block-6

P.E.C.H.S., Karachi-29, (1967).

Readers are advised that the follow7ing books listed in our July 1967Bookshelf " Japanese Architecture " ,"Japanese Handicrafts" and "Japa¬nese Gardens" are no longer dis¬tributed by Charles E. Tuttle Com¬pany, Rutland, Vermont. They arenow available in the U.S.A. throughJapan Publications Trading Company,P.O. Box 7752, Rincón Annex, 1255Howard Street, San Francisco,California 94119.

33

Letters to the Editor

34

LESSON FROM THE PAST

Sir,

I have been deeply shocked by therecent tragic conflict in the MiddleEast. It has shown once more that

only an atmosphere of friendship andmutual understanding can bring thetrue peace and effective co-operationso urgently needed by both Jews andArabs.

A Utopian thought? It may seemso nowadays, but there were times,indeed centuries, when peaceful co¬existence and cultural exchangesexisted between these peoples andbrought fruitful results in MedievalSpain for example. One need onlyrecall the achievements of such greatthinkers as Maimonides, the Jewish

rabbi, savant, physician and philos¬opher and his contemporary, Averroes,the Arab scholar, lawyer and phil¬osopher.

By publishing a number of the"Unesco Courier" devoted to the

cultural and scientific aspects of Arab-Jewish co-operation in the past,Unesco could make an importantcontribution to the cause of peacein the Middle East.

Carlo Rosso

Madrid, Spain

NEW LIGHT ON

POPULATION PROBLEMS

Sir,

The presentation of the populationproblems facing our children andgrandchildren ("Unesco Courier", Feb¬ruary 1967) was fascinating. How¬ever, your distinguished contributorsand in this they follow most contem¬porary scientific .writers may haveaccepted too easily the current pro¬jections of the orthodox demographers.In the face of such overpoweringfigures, has objective, and especiallyexternal judgment of these parametersbeen suspended just a bit? The lineof man's fate seldom turns out to be

the shortest distance between two

points, and it seems time that relateddisciplines brought their gains to bearmore closely on the demographers.

In the last few years developments,even revolutions, in accepted conceptsin anthropology, zoology, physiologyand in particular endocrinology, andpsychosomatic and psychologicalmedicine have produced potentiallyenormous contributions, which have

not been fully integrated in the maindemographic stream. There is a wealthof deductions to be harvested for in¬

stance from the work of Leakey,Keith, La Barre, Marais, Elliott,

CR. Carpenter, Wynne-Edwards, Bolk,J.J. Christian and A.D. Jonas, to namebut a few. In some sections, popu¬larization is abreast or even ahead

of the academics exemplified byArdrey's "Territoria Imperative", whichwill mean much more to demographythan has yet been expounded.

Insights from the disciplines men¬tioned can provide for instance thesort of links which Jean Fourastié is

seeking in his passage on the "fourquantities of space". A striking fore¬taste of the way in which, when awider range of disciplines is calledin aid, some of the present question-marks in studies of population, in¬dustrialization and urbanization, and

medicine fall into place was providedin a paper read at the last annualmeeting of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science

by the Swedish demographer, Olin,entitled: "Feedback mechanisms in

human populations: a hypothesisabout the self-regulation of populationgrowth". This opens up the possi¬bility of a more hopeful adjustmentof projections, which the press inNorth America was quick to seizeupon.

The rapid mobilization of inter¬disciplinary influences on contempo¬rary demography will be a vastly in¬tricate and highly intellectual task,which Unesco should be particularlywell fitted to foster.

G. E. Yates

Valetta, Malta

'AFRICAN ARTS -

ARTS D'AFRIQUE

Sir,

Readers who enjoyed your excellentJune 1967 Issue devoted to "Africa

and the African Genius", may beinterested to know that in October,

1967, the African Studies Center of

the University of California, is bring¬ing out a new quarterly, African Arts-Arts d'Afrique.

This magazine, richly illustrated (in¬cluding full-colour pages), will serveto record African traditional art and

to encourage contemporary Africanartists in all fields of artistic endea¬

vour, graphic, plastic, performing, andliterary. Its mission also is to broadenthe appreciation of the art of Africa,in and beyond Africa.

Congratulations on the continuedexcellence of the "Unesco Courier".

Paul O. Proehl, DirectorAfrican Studies Center

University of CaliforniaLos Angeles, U.S.A.

MAN AND HIS RELIGION

Sir,

In your April 1967 issue I especiallyloved the centre colour page (stainedglass, Tournai Cathedral). That naugh¬ty prelate taking precious cash fromthe bread-seller is admirable.

On another subject: the EXPO 67article is excellent but I wish youcould have found space for a photo¬graph of Canada's own pavilion. Ifind the architecture of this pavilionquite outstanding of equal interest tothat of "Habitat", for example. Andthe theme of the Canadian Pavilion

gives the theme of the entire EXPOin miniature. Perhaps you couldpublish a separate article about thisPavilion in a later issue.

It is ironic that, among all thethemes of EXPO, there is no mention

of Man and his Religion. Perhaps,indeed, we modern prelates wouldhave been unable ever to agree onthe contents of such a Pavilion (yes,in spite of the World Council ofChurches and Vatican II). But thisomission points up an enormous "la¬cune" in EXPO 67; an enormous

"lacune" also in the U.N., in Unescoand in the world. However I am old

enough and (maybe) wise enough torealize that I suggest the impossible. . . but since "all things are possiblewith God", I daresay I don't careovermuch.

Please don't tell me that there is

a Pavilion devoted to Religion atEXPO 67. I know this already, but itpays only lip-service to what I amtrying to say.

The Rev. G. L. Carnes

Vicar-General of the AnglicanChurch in Haiti, Port-au-Prince

HIROSHIMA'S MONUMENT

Sir,

Reading your article on the statuesof Rameses II at Abu Simbel beinggiven a new home (February 1967)reminded me that we in Hiroshima

also had a monument awaiting pre¬servation the ruins of the municipalbuildings high above whose dome thefirst atomic bomb was exploded in1945.

The campaign to maintain the ruinsas a monument began in Hiroshimaand became nationwide, but municipalfunds for urgent preservation measu¬res were insufficient. More moneywas raised and the task is in hand.

It is not our Intention to comme¬

morate hatred or revenge againstAmerica. We aim to end war for all

time by instilling the desire for peacein the minds of all who will come

to see the dome. We support theConstitution of Unesco.

Sakuichiro Kanai

Saitama Ken, Japan

WELCOME TO MILLTOWN

Sir,

The Milltown Unesco Group wouldlike to hear from young people inany part of the world who choose tocome to Ireland any time this yearor next. With the co-operation of localorganizations it would be possibleto accomodate them in managablenumbers from for one day to onemonth. That is our contribution to

International Tourist Year.

Michael O Sullivan

Group Leader,Knockavota, Milltown

Co. Kerry, Republic of Ireland

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We are pleased to announcethe launching of two new lan¬guage editions of the UNESCOCOURIER.

Publication began in India, inJuly 1967, of a Hindi edition inDelhi and of a Tamil edition in

Madras.

This brings to eleven thenumber of editions of the

UNESCO COURIER. The Unesco

Courier is happy to welcome thisnew international family of read¬ers which it hopes will give freshimpetus to the efforts to promoteinternational understanding ithas deployed since it beganpublication 20 years ago.

THE UNESCO

COURIER

in Hindi

and Tamil

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TAMIL

HINDI

WHERE TO RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONand order other Unesco publications

Order from any bookseller, or write direct tothe National Distributor in your country. (See listbelow ; names of distributors in countries notlisted will be supplied on request.) Payment ismade in the national currency ; the rates quotedare for an annual subscription to THE UNESCOCOURIER in any one language.

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WORLD OF WANT

WORLD OF PLENTY

Photo © Paul Almay, Paris

the globe millions go hungry while elsewhere countries have difficulty infinding outlets for their surplus food. To meet this paradoxical situation, the United Nationsand the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization five years ago set up a new form ofinternational aid : the World Food Programme. Today the Programme helps to channel thefood surpluses of 40 countries to relieve hunger and malnutrition in fifty others, (see page 30).