536 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMET1C CHEMISTS regularity in the lives of those who elevate us all. He has insatiable curi- osity, will go anywhere, roam over diverse territories, migrate into what- ever field offers the prospect of exploring the wonders of the living universe. After taking his degree at Adelaide, a suitably named place for a scientific romance to start, he worked during the war on the problems of night vision. His search led him to the academic shrine at Leeds where he had the splen- did privilege of working with Astbury and Speakman. He took his Ph.D. so recently as 1949. He is obviously not sailing but flying through life. His argosy took him to Sweden and the United States where he tried to satisfy his passion in works on the structure and formation of fibers. True to his migratory instincts, he went to London and nested for a while at the Royal Cancer Hospital, where he seems to have been lured into a tentative marriage with the keratinizing cells of hair and nails. His roving eye has perhaps become domesticated by his interest in fiber forming cells of the skin and hair. In 1960 he was awarded a Doctor of Science by Adelaide University. Favorable tail winds brought him back to Australia in 1963, where he has since been located in organizing an electron microscope unit at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. His scientific fertility is prodigious. He spawns finished works faster than fish can lay eggs. His scientific contributions are sufficiently numer- ous to be expressed logarithmically, well over a hundred at last counting. Like Lincoln, Mercer gets large ideas into an astonishingly small space. Like Newton, he can lie under a tree and make great discoveries by watch- ing so ordinary a thing as an apple fall. He has written three books. "Keratin and Keratinization" is his master- piece. The treasures in this book are precious and sanctified for all stu- dents of skin. Another work on "Cells and Cell Structure" is intended for High School students. His immense grasp, coupled with lucid literary skills, enables him to spread out in banquet form a large feast for those who have appetite but not necessarily sophisticated taste. His third book, entitled "Electron-Microscopy, a Handbook for Biologists," contains the technological secrets which have made him a master of the high arts of magnification. Like other large-minded members of the intellectual aristocracy, he is alive to the fascinations outside the laboratory. He is such an accom- plished sculptor that it takes constant moral effort not to quit science for the joys of the plastic art. Here, too, he works in new ways, as becomes a researcher. I have it in his own writing that he likes to eat, talk and walk, which are, to my knowledge, the only ordinary things he does. I presume other ordi- nary activities not included in his list would require too much time and energy or perhaps are too difficult to master for an intellectual. I will bear eyewitness to the fact that he doesn't drink. He says he gets

TENTH I,ITERATURE AWARD 537 headaches. I am reminded of the Broadway playwright who wanted to as- certain what it was in spirited drinks that made him ill, so he took Scotch and water, Rye and water, Bourbon and water, etc., and uncritically con- cluded that water was the cause of his trouble. Mercer seems not to have tried the inverse experiment of imbibing pure alcohol on the chance that unrelated substances in ethylated beverages might be at fault. Every genius has blind spots. I close by mentioning a property which you will soon observe for your- self, an honest, unaffected modesty. In Lloyd George's words, there never was a small man who felt small or a large man who felt large. It is my pleasure to commend to your attention an international giant. Acceptance BY E. H. MERCER, PH.D. When I received word that I was to be honored with this award I had doubts as to my worthiness, since I had worked so little on problems related to cosmetics. These doubts persisted. In fact they have only just been dispersed this evening by the eloquence of my eulogist, Dr. Kligman. He has finally convinced me that I am a fit and proper recipient. In a eulogist, moderation is not a virtue. He needs must exaggerate or (not to put too fine a point on it) even lie in a good cause. And of eulogists' lies, it may be said (as that charming young lady Fanny Hill is alleged--wrongly as it happens--to have said in quite another context), "There are no little ones, only BIG ones and whoppers." Well, A1 Kligman told some whoppers to- night, and I'm grateful to him for introducing me so mendaciously. I accept this little slip of paper now without qualm. Another emotion I experience on receiving the news was pleasure-- pleasure that it should come from the Soc•v.T¾ or CosM•.Tm Ci•v.M•sws that they should take the trouble to put on record in this substantial way (for $1000 is substantial) their faith in the value of academic research to cosmetic science. I wish even more now that I could work directly on cos- metics there seems to be money in it. But in Australia, where there are, alas! twenty t•mes more sheep than women, one has to work on sheep. When I came to write my book on keratinization, my interests had drifted farther from practical applications. I wrote because I had become prey to that dangerous urge to tidy things up and put them in order: an urge common to philosophers, religious fanatics, dictators and paranoid of all kinds. The masses of unrelated and undigested data about skin and hair in books and journals upset me. I set about tidying it up in response to this personal need. I presented the epidermis in molecular terms as a biological adaptation