Shapley Detects 'Hope of World' in India's New Intellectual Awakening

Bearing an honorary degree presented by Viceroy Archibald Wavell and praising the interest in scientific matters shown by men and women of India, Harlow Shapley, director of the College Observatory, returned to Cambridge Thursday morning from a month-long tour of Indian universities and observatories.

An urgent request from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, vice-president of the interim-government, summoned him to India in early January. Successor of President Conant as head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Profesor Shapley represented the organization at the thirty-fourth annual meeting of the Indian Science Congress.

"India is a country growing up in science," Professor Shapley asserted yesterday. "Political leaders of all parties and men of the government took great interest in the science conferences."

Delhi University Packed

Three thousand people swarmed to Delhi University, jammed together on wooden benches, and sat on the ground in chilling Indian weather to hear the American astronomer predict what a Newsweek correspondent called "a great intellectual awakening" in India. "I have never spoken," said Professor Shapley, "to a more responsive, alert, and eager audience. India is one of the hopes for the world. The sky is the limit for scientific research in India."

He indicated, however, that his primary mission lay in the "scientific conferences on scientific subjects," and in giving advice on the "modernization of the whole astronomical set-up in India, much of which has become dormant."

Visits at universities in Lehor, Karachi Bombay, and Hyderabad were augmented during the homeward journey by one scientific conference in Egypt.