Scientific governance in Britain, 1914-79

344 Pages·2016·13.632 MB·English

by  Leggett, Don, Sleigh, Charlotte

Scientific governance in Britain,
1914–79

Scientific
governance in
Britain, 1914–79
Edited by Don Leggett and Charlotte Sleigh
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2016
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
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may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of
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Published by Manchester University Press
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ISBN 978 07190 9098 1 hardback
First published 2016
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Contents
Notes on contributors page vii
Acknowledgements xi
Foreword by Professor Sir John Beddington xii
Scientific governance: an introduction 1
Don Leggett and Charlotte Sleigh
Part I: Governance of science
1 Give me a laboratory and I will win you the war:
governing science in the Royal Navy 27
Don Leggett
2 Bureaucratic reformism and the cults of Sir Henry Tizard
and operational research 45
William Thomas
3 The evolving role of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the
Cabinet, 1940–71 63
James Goodchild
4 Mugwumps? The Royal Society and the governance of
post-war British science 81
Jeff Hughes
5 The Defence Research Committee, 1963–72 100
Jon Agar
vi Contents
6 Defence research and genetic engineering: fears and
dissociation in the 1970s 122
Jon Agar and Brian Balmer
7 Geological governance: surveying the North Sea in the
Cold War 144
Leucha Veneer
8 Doing it for Britain: science and service in oral history
with government scientists 161
Sally Horrocks and Thomas Lean
Part II: Governance by science
9 Geneticists on the farm: agriculture and the all-English
loaf 181
Berris Charnley
10 ‘Man against disease’: the medical Left and the lessons
of science, 1918–48 199
John Stewart
11 Science as heterotopia: the British Interplanetary Society
before the Second World War 217
Charlotte Sleigh
12 Governing science on BBC radio in 1930s Britain:
religion, eugenics and war 234
Ralph Desmarais
13 Governing the science of selection: the psychological
sciences, 1921–45 255
Alice White
14 Governing for happiness: Mark Abrams, subjective
social indicators and the post-war explosion of ‘middle-
opinion’ 274
Scott Anthony
15 Governance through education: Herman Bondi, Karl
Popper and the making of scientific citizens 295
Neil Calver
Index 314
Notes on contributors
Jon Agar is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at
University College London. He is the author of Science in the twen-
tieth century and beyond (2012).
Scott Anthony is Associate Professor of Public History at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. His books include Public rela-
tions and the making of modern Britain (2012) and The projection
of Britain: a history of the GPO Film Unit (2011).
Brian Balmer is Professor of Science Policy Studies in the Department
of Science & Technology Studies, University College London. His
research combines historical and sociological approaches to explore
the nature of scientific expertise, and the role of experts in science
policy formation, particularly within the life sciences. He is author
of Britain and biological warfare: expert advice and science policy,
1936–65 (2001) and Secrecy and science: a historical sociology of
biological and chemical warfare (2013).
John Beddington was UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser
from 2008 until 2013. His research background is in population
biology, in which subject he most recently held a chair at Imperial
College London. He is currently senior advisor at the Oxford
Martin School, University of Oxford, a centre of research that
addresses global challenges.
Neil Calver is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of
Kent. Publications include: ‘Sir Peter Medawar: science, creativity
viii notes on Contributors
and the popularization of Karl Popper’, Notes and Records: The
Royal Society Journal for the History of Science, 67 (2013), 301–14;
with Miles Parker OBE, ‘The logic of scientific unity? Medawar, the
Royal Society and the Rothschild controversy’, Notes and Records:
The Royal Society Journal for the History of Science (forthcoming).
Berris Charnley works for the ConSciCom project based at St
Anne’s College, University of Oxford. He is interested in seeds,
genes, farms and food, and in issues of participation and commu-
nication around knowledge production. His most recent book was
an edited collection with Charles Lawson, Intellectual property and
genetically modified organisms: a convergence in laws (2015).
Ralph Desmarais holds a PhD from Imperial College London and
is a historian of science whose research focuses on British scien-
tific intellectuals and their political and cultural engagement in the
decades straddling the Second World War. A representative work
is ‘Jacob Bronowski: a humanist intellectual for an atomic age,
1946–1956’, British Journal for the History of Science, 45 (2012),
573–89. He is currently a visiting research fellow in the History
Department, Kings College London.
James Goodchild is currently completing his book entitled ‘The
Birth of Scientific and Technical Intelligence’ (STI), which reassesses
the Second World War origins of conceptual STI and, importantly,
contextualises the foundations of STI into the wider structures of
twentieth-century science and intelligence organisation. He has
taught modern history at both Plymouth and Exeter universities
and his research interests are grounded in the interrelationship
between science, intelligence, war and the state.
Sally Horrocks lectures in Modern British History at the University
of Leicester and is senior academic advisor to the Oral History of
British Science, a National Life Stories project in partnership with
the British Library. She has published widely on industrial science
in twentieth-century Britain and has acted recently as consultant to
the BBC on commemoration of the First World War.
Jeff Hughes is at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology
and Medicine, University of Manchester. He writes on the history
notes on Contributors ix
of radioactivity and nuclear physics and is currently researching the
history of the Royal Society in the twentieth century.
Thomas Lean holds a PhD in the History of Science, Technology
and Medicine from the University of Manchester. His research
interests include the history of technology, particularly the history
of computing, public representations of science and technology,
energy history and oral history. He is currently working on An Oral
History of British Science and An Oral History of The Electricity
Supply Industry for National Life Stories at the British Library.
Don Leggett is Associate Professor of the History of Science and
Technology at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He is author
of Shaping the Royal Navy: technology, authority and naval archi-
tecture, c. 1830–1906 (2015) and co-editor with Richard Dunn of
Re-inventing the ship: science, technology and the maritime world,
1800–1918 (2012). His work has received the 2010 Singer Prize
from the British Society for the History of Science and the 2013
Young Scholar Prize from the International Union for the History
and Philosophy of Science. He is currently working on a book that
explores the history of scientific expertise within the British state
between 1870 and 1939.
Charlotte Sleigh is Professor of Science Humanities at the University
of Kent and has published on various topics in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century history of science. She is currently editor of the
British Journal for the History of Science and is working on a mon-
ograph about science and science fiction in interwar Britain.
John Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Health History, Glasgow
Caledonian University. His research interests include the history of
childhood and of social welfare in twentieth-century Britain. Future
projects include a biography of Richard Titmuss, social policy aca-
demic and advisor to the Labour Party.
William Thomas is the author of Rational action: the sciences of
policy in Britain and America, 1940–1960 (2015). He has held
positions at the American Institute of Physics and Imperial College
London, and is currently a senior historian at History Associates,
Inc., in Rockville, Maryland, USA.