Outward bound

Abstract

Peter Collins, who worked as a policy officer and historian for the Royal Society for 32 years, has written an invaluable, eye-opening account of this premier organization for science, from the Tercentenary of 1960 through to the 350th anniversary of 2010. In doing so he fills a considerable gap in the historical literature. The account is meticulously sourced, drawing on Collins' unparalleled knowledge of the recent archives of the Society, as well as interviews, the memories of colleagues and the material held in external collections. But the volume is more than that. Between 1960 and 2010 the Society was led by 10 scientists—Howard Florey, Patrick Blackett, Alan Hodgkin, Alexander Todd, Andrew Huxley, George Porter, Michael Atiyah, Aaron Klug, Bob May and Martin Rees—but Collins has resisted, rightly, the temptation to organize his account as a chronology of presidents. Instead, his stated aim is ‘to analyse some key features of the Society's approach to promoting science … and thus to uncover something of its identity’ (p. xi). The chapters therefore explore these key themes and features. If we step back and look at the most significant changes in the organization's recent history, the most striking is that the Royal Society, through the years since the Second World War, has become more open, more publicly visible and more likely to take action in public than was the case, and this transformation has been partly deliberately sought but also partly thrust reluctantly upon it. Collins opens his history with a case in point. In 1945 the Society had to elect a new president. Should the president be chosen solely because he was ‘demonstrably in the very top rank of acknowledged scientific achievement’ or was it the case that, under ‘exceptional circumstances’ (p. 9), other characteristics might be necessary, such as political acuity? The …