Science is playing an ever-increasing role in our culture, our life and the economy of the world. Yet at the same time its results are becoming, for the layman, increasingly abstract and apparently further removed from everyday life. Astronomy is dealing with cosmic cataclysms billions of light-years away; physics with nuclear particles which,exist only a billionth of a second; biology with macro-molecules containing billions of atoms ["billion" is used here in its American sense of a thousand million]. Meanwhile, the pursuit of pure science is becoming more and more expensive. Astronomers want huge new radio-telescopes to look at strange objects at the edge of the universe; probers of outer space want ever more expensive gadgets for the exploration of realms far removed from us; physicists want more money to find out more about the innermost structure of the atomic nucleus - and the citizen has a right to ask: why pure science?
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