I was a chemistry major in college, and I must admit that we looked down on engineers. They were a slightly strange lot of guys (no women in those days) with pocket protectors and dangling slide rules. Their building was way across campus, and they had no room in their schedules for English, history, foreign languages, or philosophy. And engineers always seemed to have a kind of academic grease under their fingernails. Admittedly, we chemists had acid holes in our clothes, but we wore them as a badge of honor―because we were doing "pure science" and were pursuing "fundamental knowledge." My change of heart began when I joined an oil company and found out that chemists were the outsiders whose ideas were usually dismissed by managers who had grown up in the oil patch. Engineers ran the place, turning sulfurous black crude into gasoline and petrochemical feedstocks that propelled the national economy. Later I joined Texas Instruments (TI), where the entire culture was one of engineers. Even the chief financial officer had been a double-E in college. And two weeks ago when Jack St. Clair Kilby, a modest former TI engineer without a Ph.D. and a revered friend, was honored with the Nobel Prize for his 1958 invention of the integrated circuit, my false chemist's pride was dashed forever. So I stand here today humble and respectful in this hall of engi-neerine accomDlishment.
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机译：我是大学化学专业的学生，我必须承认我们看不起工程师。他们是一个有点奇怪的家伙（那些日子里没有女人），身上有口袋保护套和晃动的滑尺。他们的建筑横跨校园，而且他们的日程安排中没有空间容纳英语，历史，外语或哲学。工程师的指甲似乎总是带有某种学术油脂。诚然，我们的化学家的衣服上有酸性孔，但我们戴上这些孔是为了纪念自己的荣誉，因为我们在做“纯科学”，在追求“基础知识”。当我加入一家石油公司时，我就改变了主意，发现化学家是局外人，他们的想法通常被在那片油田长大的经理们所摒弃。工程师跑到位，将含硫的黑色原油变成汽油和石化原料，从而推动了国民经济的发展。后来我加入了德州仪器（TI），那里的整个文化都是工程师之一。甚至首席财务官都曾是大学里的双E。而两周前，杰克·圣克莱尔·基尔比（Jack St. Clair Kilby）成为一名谦虚的前TI工程师，没有博士学位。一位受人尊敬的朋友因其1958年发明的集成电路而获得了诺贝尔奖，我的化学家的骄傲永远消失了。因此，我今天在这所工程学的大厅里谦虚而恭敬地站在这里。
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