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-hydrates were converted to coal and oil. In the twentieth century, they constitute our main current resource of organic material and of available energy.
Three carbohydrates in particular, because of their function as structural or reserve materials in plants, are presented abundantly to the hand of man. These are cellulose, starch and the sugar designated by scientists as sucrose. Of these
three, cellulose is the most abundant but only starch and sugar can be utilized
directly by the human body for supplying heat and motion. All three constitute organic raw materials whose direct utilization or transformation.into useful
prod-ucts challenges investigators and artisans in every branch of science and industry. There are other carbohydrates of great importance in natural economy, but most of these, functioning in small concentrations or serving as intermediates in the
trans-formations of the plant are never accumulated in such quantities as to constitute a
major resource for human use.
The efficiency, however, with which the various plants on this earth's
surface are able to store solar energy in the form of utilizable carbohydrate is by no means uniform. The bamboo produces cellulose far more rapidly than the spruce-tree of Maine, while the sweet potato is a better starch-maker than the onion.
.Among the domesticated plants that convert sunlight into edible carbo-hydrate-, the sugar-cane and sugar beet are champions, each in its own habitat. The beet produces nearly five times as much food energy per acre as the corn or soy-beans which can be grown under similar climati~ conditions. In favorable spots, an acre of sugar cane has produced fifty times the average food yield of corn or beans.
Human society is therefore obligated to estimate fully the importance of sugar as a currently available store of ~olar energy. We hold it consistent with
the spirit and needs of the post-war era to promote investigation which will
ac-quaint us more completely with the functions and behavior of sugar in the human
and animal body. Ae a food, sugar must be fully evaluated, its virtues determined,
its ~efects apprehended, recognized and overcome or compensated. As an organic compound, its present and potential utility in medicine and in every art, industry or technologr must be explored.
In order that such explorations shall hold the maximum practical value,
the disaccharide sucrose itself as it comes to us from plant sources must be the point of departure. Studies of related sugars or other materials will be valuable with respect to utilization of this major resource only insofar as these other materials can be derived in a practical way from sucrose, or insofar as their study
will give information directly concerning the behavior of sugar itself.
The Directors of the Sugar Research Foundation, Inc., in an effort to
stimulate such inquiry pertaining to sugar have established a series of Sugar
Research Prizes which it is my privilege to announce tonig.~t. These prizes will be awarded under the following terms I and conditions:
1. The awards will be given in recognition of the development of demonstrated original knowl.edge about or practical uses for sugar* in the prosecution of the war, in medicine, agriculture, the arts, the industries or in other fields of human endeavor
as judged by their importance in terms of the advancement of knowledge and of the public benefit.
• the tem 11~ar- 11
