Pre-Cambrian Microbes

At the University of California, Professor Charles Bernard Lipman, plant physiologist, took a chunk of pre-Cambrian rock. The piece came from Canada. Geologists considered it 100 to 200 million years old. Professor Lipman split the chunk and from the fractured surfaces scraped what he hoped were primeval microbes.

Hastily he planted the scrapings in test tubes with germ culture mediums. He sealed the tubes so that no modern air could affect the scrapings. If he did have pre-Cambrian life in his tubes modern air would spoil his research, for the earth's present atmosphere is quite different from that of geological ages ago.

After a time Professor Lipman noted a new murkiness in his sealed tubes. Something surely was growing therein. He waited a while longer. Then he examined the growths under the microscope.

Last week, elated, he announced that he saw microbes hitherto unknown to science. They were shaped like rods and linked in chains. They produced spores, such as many known microbes and toadstools and mushrooms develop.

Professor Lipman believes that the ancient germ spores have been sealed up in minute cases, similar to the cocoons in which larvae rest. It is well known that microbes can live through great heat or cold, and remain quiescent for long periods. But the age of Professor Lipman's rods astounded even him. He duplicated the experiment with organisms from Pliocene rocks, one to two million years old.

Charles Bernard Lipman's family was one of the relatively few Russian Jewish families permitted to live in Russia proper. (Most U. S. Jews who call themselves "Russian" were born in Polish or Lithuanian districts.)

The Lipmans migrated about Russia. The father carried the Russian forenames Michael Gregory. The mother was Ida Birkhahn. Charles Bernard was born at Moscow (1883). His older brother Jacob Goodale was born at Friedrichstadt (1874).

Jacob Goodale Lipman studied at the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School in New Jersey. That was 34 years ago. At Rutgers College he got his bachelor of science degree. Later he was to get doctorates, in science and philosophy. He became a soil chemist and bacteriologist. He has taught at Rutgers since 1902. He is now both director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experimental Station and also Rutgers' dean of agriculture.

Charles Bernard Lipman is also a dean, of California's graduate division since 1923. He studied at Rutgers when his older brother was first an instructor there.