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Show Cooperation Between Men And Nations Ilecessarv For Scientific Progress Cooperation between men in different countries and through different ages is essential to progress in science. For example, exam-ple, Herodotus, discussing geometry geom-etry with the priests of Egypt, suggested that "Greek geometry had been derived from that country. In the 13th century, the Mongol chief, Hulagu Khan, founded the best astronomical observatory of his day in Persia where the Chinese Fu Meng-Chi met the Spaniard el-Andalusi. In the 17th century, the international in-ternational character of science became more apparent. "It may, perhaps, in general be safely computed," wrote the British Royal Societie's first historian, "that there has been as large a Communication of Foreign Arts and Inventions to the Royal Roy-al Society, within this small compass of time, as ever before did pass over the English Channel Chan-nel since the very first transportation trans-portation of Arts into our Island." Is-land." How fundamental free communication com-munication is for science has often been dramatically demonstrated. demon-strated. During the winter of ; 1948, for example, a strange illness ill-ness threatened to put out of action the largest automobile factory in France. At one time, 500 workers were sick, their eyes afflicted by a burning, blinding inflammation. French doctors said they had never seen this before. Even scientists at the world famous Pasteur Institute Ins-titute in Paris were puzzled, until a reference to an article, which had. appeared five years earlier in an American medical journal, was discovered, revealing reveal-ing that the same malady had afflicted workers at the Kaiser shipyards in California, and that a cure had been found by doctors at the Columbia Medical Medi-cal Center. The French scientists scien-tists were ignorant of this because be-cause they had been cut off from contact with the outside world during the German occupation. oc-cupation. To reinforce the free flow of scientific information, UNESCO has established four Field Science Sci-ence Cooperation offices one each in Uruguay, China, India, and Egypt. |