ABSTRACT
Chemistry was obviously advancing, an expanding profession, which had economic opportunities. Sociologists are interested in individual motives and personal attributes far less than in the occupation itself. Consequently, their conceptual framework is designed to raise instead questions about social mechanisms. Chemists themselves no doubt recognize that people are drawn into chemistry mainly because of interests aroused in high school or college. Plumbers or coal miners do not attract their recruits by way of the nation's educational system. Coal mining is such a geographically placed occupation that young men tend naturally to follow their fathers into the occupation. Plumbing also tends to be such a socially inherited trade that in some cities a young man can scarcely expect to get a license unless his father, brother, or some other relative belongs to the local union. The images that these children derived from their ex posure to science writing and biography were attractive, even though vague.
