The Impact of Society on Science

In the grim days of the Cold War, with the threat of global nuclear war hanging over us, who could have imagined that Communism would undergo a total collapse, that the Soviet Union would disintegrate, and that Russia would rapidly become a poor country controlled by gangsters. Our world now has an immediacy of contact never experienced before. Technology has brought all of humanity together, and nearly everything can be watched live--war in the Middle …

…with some hope of success. Scientists hope it is not too much to ask that rich societies provide more support for this and other fundamental fields of biology. They feel there is a need to assure the future of biological research and prevent it from becoming stilted and boring. This can only be accomplished by attracting new young minds to this science and offer them problems as challenging as those that excited my previous generations.