SCIENTIST IN THE SOVIET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 396, 24 January 1947, Page 12

SCIENTIST IN THE SOVIET

The Russians are Friendly

ROFESSOR ERIC ASHBY, Pos. of London, lately pro- ~~ fessor of botany at Sydney University and now on his way to Manchester, had plenty of time to explore Auckland during the six weeks his ship, the Sydney Star, was | lying about the docks fuming at the ’ hawsers-or whatever it is ships do when they are delayed for six weeks in one port. With Professor’ Chapman, of Auckland University College, Frofessor Ashby visited Waipoua forest and other places of particular botanical interest; he '-recordéd three talks at 1YA (scheduled to be heard from that station on Monday, January 20, at 7.15 p.m., and on two successive Mondays, and later from the other national stations); he explored Auckland shops and found their goods expensive, especially the fruit; and for part of the time he escaped from his too steadfast Sydney Star to a beach cottage that was lent him and his wife and their two sons, Michael, aged eleven, and Peter, who ‘s nine. Both were born in England but they both, Professor Ashby says, speak "dinkam Aussie." "The boys have had a grand time all round .in Auckland-especially at the beaches where they’ve been swimming without worrying about sharks for the first time in. their lives." Professor Ashby said the two or three fatal.ties every year in Sydney certainly kept people worrying; I asked him if he had ever seen a shark, "You don’t sée a shark. You see a fin and then you go rapidly out of the water; it’s safe enough bathjng in crowds, but the danger is on quiet beachesthey’ve been known to drag away a child who was paddling; so you see they will come into quite shallow water." % Bd Bae PROFESSOR ASHBY was trained et London University and held various — lecturing posts in England and America; he worked on a Commonwealth Fund © grant at Chicago University and spent | some time at the desert laboratory of the’ Carnegie Institution in Arizona where he wrote a book and drank a lot of Mexican tequila. In 1938 he went to Sydney and now he is to be professor of botany at Manchester University. He said he is glad to be going there: "There are in Manchester two endowed chairs of botany and that means that each professor has time to think and to do research work-he .sn’t forced to draw all the time on his intellectual capital. Last year at Sydney I had 1300 students in first-year botany; with numbers like that you simply have no time for original thinking and sooner or later you feel that you are getting on the intellectual breadl.ne. I'm glad to be going to Manchester too because it is the home of the Halle orchestra-it's ‘the home of good art all round." The "entry on Professor Ashby in Who’s Who

ends:-Recreation: chamber music. In Australia he played the violin in quartets -but not in public: "It’s not fun any longer once you play in public," he said. * x * URING the war Professor Ashby added considerable war work to his teaching duties; he conducted an inquiry for the Government: on the enlistment of scientific resources in war and became director of the Scientific Liaison Bureau-its task was to deal direct with the armed services and farm out their scientific problems to the right scientific departments and institutions all over Australia. Then in 1945 he was sent as scientific attaché to the Australian legation in Moscow. "How did such an appointment come about? If seems an unusual one to us in New Zealand." Sifting the Glamour. "Well, it is unusual. What happened was that the various. scientists I was working with in Australia were always read ng, as we all do, glamorous reports of scientific developments and so on in the Soviet; and the Australian scientists were always asking, as all scientists must be, just what there was in this report wae

or that. So it seemed a good idea to the government that a scient.st should go attached to the Jegation to get a first hand bearing on science to-day in Russia. It was no use asking a diplomat to look round because he wouldn’t know , what he should look for. Besides, a diplomat in ‘Russia can’t look round-he’s like a sacred bull in an oriental country and there are more formal.ties for him to observe than you can imagine. Well, I was chosen to go and for a time after I arrived 1 saw nothing and visited no universities or scientific establishments. I was. still reading the glamorous accounts of sc entific developments that the whole world was reading, and I was still being quite unable to sift the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) useful from the purely journalistic chatter. But after I had applied and applied they apparently decided that I was a harmless and amiable chap and let me see a good deal of what I wanted to see. And then I found the Russians very generous and only too willing to talk and explain and show me round." "Even the Bees Work for Stalin!" T ‘had read Professor Ashby’s scripts so I knew about some of the places he had visited-such as the research institute of bee culture, where the bees are trained to concentrate on one particular kind of flower. Professor Ashby told me that the methods used in that institute are already being used now in Australia. "A remark that was made to me at that institute when I was being shown the work illustrates something about the naive and simple character of the

Russian people as a whole," Professor Ashby said. "This particular young man showed me some bees hard at work and said with pride, ‘You see, in Russia even the bees work for Stalin!’ Another characteristic they have is even more charming: they all love flowers. I used to go out into the country in the weekends and there would always be people coming home with bunches of flowers they had gathered. Once an old man with whom I could exchange only the most rudimentary conversation, sat in the corner of the carriage with a huge bunch of primroses-must have taken him hours to gather-and at the end of the journey he carefully divided it into two and thrust half upon me. And that was not by any means an isolated kindness." "You Can’t Answer Back" "And could you manage the language in scientific circles?" Professor Ashby groaned. "Russian is a@ real hurdle. You struggle and struggle and at last you come to the stage where you're rather like a dog-you can understand but you can’t answer back. I (continued on next page)

Science in the Soviet Union

(continued from previous page) managed to get along, but with difficulty, But the Russians are so jolly and so ready to be friendly if they have permission that you find yourself getting along somehow with your halting language, For instance, I went up to Mur-mansk-1500 or more miles from Mos-cow-a four-day train journey. I found myself. in a carriage with three men, two of them government officials, and we had a lot of fun. We slept on palliasses on the boards and aqte together and, most of all, we sang together. They sang dozens of Russian folk songs." "And did you sing Waltzing Matilda?" "Yes, I did. As a matter of fact I sang Waltzing Matilda, right through, every verse; quite an achievement and they loved it. We had plenty of time-you always have plenty of time on Russ.an train journeys-to get to know each other." "Time, because the distances are so vast?" ~ Women Drive the Trains "No, not really-of course it’s partly » that. But the trains go so slowly, stop so often, are so leisurely. They load up with birch wood at all the small $s 2% 0S Care lt

stations; whenever they run out of wood they stop and collect a new load. And here’s where the flowers come into the picture again; the trains are mostly driven by women and you'll see them in their overalls getting out of their engine cabin and going to the flower stalls on the stations to buy flowers. A quaint sight-the smudged engine driver in her black cabin with a vase of violets stuck up in front. They probably need renewing at every second station." "Do they get enough power from wood?" "Well, those trains don’t travel fast and maybe that’s partly why. But they’ve had to run on birch wood-they’ve got plenty of it and it’s handy. to the lines — -and they have been extremely» short of coal in many districts." | a bg % PROFESSOR ASHBY has just finished | a book on his experiences in Russia; — this will be published in the Penguin © series very soon. He has written several — books on different aspects of botany and one in collaboration with his wife on German-English terminology in botany. And there has just been issued in Aus- — tralia a collection of his addresses and — --

the various articles he wrote on education in general during the last eight years in Australia. He called at The Listener office the day he left Auckland and told me a few more things he had done in Auckland to fill in time; he had, for instance, listened to many good gramophone records and had taken part in chamber music ashore and practised his: vyiolinwith the mute on+-on the ship; and he had been to a student performance of Macbeth-which he described as the best amateur performance he og seen anywhere. "Now, if you’re ever in, Mateeestar do come and look me up-in the fog," he said. "And then I’ll tell you what I

think of Auckland."

J.