Manchester University Press - Scientific governance in Britain, 1914-79

Scientific governance in Britain, 1914-79 examines the connected histories of how science was governed, and used in governance, in twentieth-century Britain. During the middle portion of that century, British science grew dramatically in scale, reach and value. These changes were due in no small part to the two world wars and their associated effects, notably post-war reconstruction and the on-going Cold War. As the century went on, there were more scientists - requiring more money to fund their research - occupying ever more niches in industry, academia, military and civil institutions. Combining the latest research on twentieth-century British science with insightful discussion of what it meant to govern - and govern with - science, this volume provides both an invaluable introduction to science in twentieth-century Britain for students and a fresh thematic focus on science and government for researchers interested in the histories of science and governance.

This volume features a foreword from Sir John Beddington, UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser 2008-13.

Reviews

'The wide range of case studies, both temporally and thematically, make this volume indispensable for any student of British science and government in the twentieth century.'
Waqar Zaidi, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Annals of Science, December 2016

Scientific governance: an introduction - 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 - Don Leggett
2. Bureaucratic reformism and the cults of Sir Henry Tizard and Operational Research - William Thomas
3. The evolving role of the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Cabinet, 1940-71 - James Goodchild
4. Mugwumps? The Royal Society and the governance of post-war British science - Jeff Hughes
5. The Defence Research Committee, 1963-72 - Jon Agar
6. Defence research and genetic engineering: fears and dissociation in the 1970s - Jon Agar and Brian Balmer
7. Geological governance: surveying the North Sea in the Cold War - Leucha Veneer
8. Doing it for Britain: science and service in oral history with government scientists - Sally Horrocks and Tom Lean
Part II: Governance by science
9. Geneticists on the farm: agriculture and the all-English loaf - Berris Charnley
10. 'Man against disease': the medical left and the lessons of science, 1918-48 - John Stewart
11. Science as heterotopia: the British Interplanetary Society before World War II - Charlotte Sleigh
12. Governing science on BBC radio in 1930s Britain: religion, eugenics and war - Ralph Desmarais
13. Governing the science of selection: the psychological sciences, 1921-45 - Alice White
14. Governing for happiness: Mark Abrams, subjective social indicators and the post-war explosion of 'middle-opinion' - Scott Anthony
15. Governance through education: Herman Bondi, Karl Popper and the making of scientific citizens - Neil Calver
Index

Editors

Don Leggett is Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan

Charlotte Sleigh is Professor of Science Humanities at the University of Kent