LIFE AND DEATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 458, 13 September 1928, Page 9

LIFE AND DEATH

Scientist Reaches Eve Of Astounding Discovery 7 MAN'S ETERNAL PROBLEM (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (United Service) Received 12.19 p.m. LONDON, Wednesday. A LARGE audience of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was enthralled by Dr. F. G. Dorman, professor of inorganic and physical chemistry in University College, London, when he suggested that the longsought link between living and non-living matter may have been discovered as bacteriophage, a minute organism the nature of which is being investigated.

If life sprang from non-living matter, the earliest forms of bacteria must have been of the most minute character, invisible through the finest microscopes, and passing easily through the pores of a porcelain filter. These must be sought in filterable viruses. If ve established a continuity of dimensions between the living and the non-living, it would be difficult to indicate a point at which it could be said: “Here there is life; there there is none.” Professor Dorman said that re-

searches by Prolessor Archibald Hill, of London University, indicated that he was on the eve of an astounding discovery—at the gate of life and death —and bringing near the day when the scientist would be able to make a living cell. Professor Edward P. Cathcart, of Glasgow University. commenting, says: “You can go on a thousand years improving the delicacy and exactness of the measurement of life’s apparatus, without coming nearer the solution of the central problem, namely, ‘What is life?’ ”