Alexander Todd - A Time to Remember

Both in Britain and in the United States science was fully harnessed to the war effort between 1939 and 1945 with the spectacular results we all know. In Britain guidance for the overall effort was provided by the Scientific Advisory Committee to the War Cabinet. This committee, which was chaired by the Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, was quite small consisting of the President of the Royal Society (from 1940-45 my father-in-law, Sir Henry Dale), two of the Society's Honorary Secretaries and the heads of the Medical and Agricultural Research Councils and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The impressive contributions made by science during the war years led to a feeling in government, as well as in scientific circles, that perhaps a somewhat similarly organised scientific effort would be equally valuable in peace, and especially during the period of reconstruction and re-orientation of effort which would follow immediately after the end of hostilities. Shortly after the end of the war, a committee under Sir Alan Barlow (the Barlow Committee) was set up to look at some aspects of this, and especially at our needs for scientific manpower. Amongst other things, it recommended the setting up of two advisory bodies at the highest level - an Advisory Council on Scientific Policy dealing with civil science and technology, including manpower requirements, and a Defence Research Policy Committee to deal with defence matters. It was envisaged that these two bodies would have a common chairman, so that proper liaison would be ensured, and it was suggested that the chairman would be employed as a full-time civil servant. These recommendations were accepted, and, in 1947, the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy was set up ' to advise the Lord President of the Council in the exercise of his responsibility for the formulation and execution of Government scientific policy'. Sir Henry Tizard was appointed to be simultaneously Chairman of the Advisory Council and of the Defence Research Policy Committee. Much to my surprise I received from the Lord President of the Council (Herbert Morrison) an invitation to join the Council as one of the original members. The invitation surprised me, partly because as a chemist I had not been heavily involved in the war effort - certainly less so than many physicists - and partly because I did not consider myself at all knowledgeable on policy matters; but the prospect was attractive and I accepted the invitation.

I suppose it was my membership of A.C.S.P. that first stimulated my interest in the interaction between science and government which is commonly described by the rather loose expression 'science policy'. Until I joined it, I had taken little interest in affairs outside chemistry and the universities with which I had been associated. Certain it is that from about 1947 onwards I became increasingly involved in the problem of providing adequate scientific and technological advice to government, and this has remained a major interest in my career since then, both on a national and international level. The need for governments to be given all available scientific and technological information on any given topic, together with the scientific implications of that information (insofar as they can be foreseen), if they are to take wise decisions in the field of public policy is now, I think, well recognised. The problem is to devise the proper machinery for doing so. That machinery must vary from country to country according to the system of government, but even a generation after recognition of the need, no wholly satisfactory answer has yet been found for any country.

As originally constituted, the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy (A.C.S.P.) had twelve members in addition to its chairman. Of these, three were academic scientists, two were scientific industrialists, and one was an officer of the Royal Society nominated by the President. In addition, there were the three secretaries of the Research Councils, the Chairman of the University Grants Committee, a senior Treasury official, and a chief scientist from a government department. It was later enlarged to include a scientist representing the interests of atomic energy and the Director of the newly formed Nature Conservancy. All appointments were personal, i.e. no alternates were allowed and members were expected to give their own views, and not simply peddle briefs on the part of any organisation to which they belonged. It will be observed that official and non-official members were finely balanced so as to avoid officialdom ruling the roost. The secretariat, which was quite small (in my view, too small), was attached to the office of the Lord President of the Council, the minister responsible for the Research Councils and for general advice to the Cabinet on scientific and technological policy. In the original A.C.S.P., Solly Zuckerman and I were very much junior to the other members with the exception of E. W. Playfair, the Treasury representative, and we tended to play the part of the opposition from time to time, and this was probably no bad thing. I continued as a member and served on various panels or sub-committees until I retired by rotation in 1951 and, during that time, I learned a lot from Henry Tizard about running committees, about balancing opposing viewpoints, and reaching proper decisions. Tizard was an immensely able, and withal an extremely friendly, man with an impish sense of humour and a fine wit. Many are the stories told about him; one of his practices which I remember was his method of choosing members for any A.C.S.P. sub-committee which appeared to have a tiresome and unattractive remit. Tizard used to begin the operation by looking around the conference table and saying 'Well now! Who isn't here today?'

My resignation in April 1951 gave me little respite from A.C.S.P. On 31 March 1952 Tizard retired. Only a few months before he was due to leave, a Conservative government under Churchill came into power again and Lord Woolton, who had made a great reputation as Minister of Food during the war, became Lord President of the Council. I knew and liked Lord Woolton (known, to many of his younger friends at least, as Uncle Fred) who was a fellow member of the Court of the Worshipful Company of Salters. I had a note from him one day in February 1952 asking me to come along and see him at the House of Lords. When I got there, he said there was no point in beating about the bush - would I accept the chairmanship of A.C.S.P. in succession to Tizard? He explained that it had been decided that the new chairman should be an independent scientist working part-time, and that the office should be separated from the chairmanship of the D.P.R.C; liaison between the two bodies would be arranged by having each chairman (or his nominated representative) sit on the other body. This arrangement was, of course, more acceptable to me than that under which Tizard had operated, for I was quite determined not to join the civil service. However, just at that time my researches were forging ahead - we had just solved the nucleic acid structure, completed the synthesis of flavin-adenine-dinucleotide, the first of the complex nucleotide coenzymes, and all sails were set. So I told Woolton that I really was very busy, and that I was trying to cut down commitments rather than take on any more. We talked around the subject for a bit, and then he said 'I'm asking you to do something important for the country. Do I take it you don't want to help your country? After all, you can have my authority to resign from any other government commitment you may have, and stick simply to A.C.S.P. How about it?' Well, I didn't have much option after that, so I said 'All right, I'll do it - but although I will accept an allowance to cover my out of pocket expenses, I will not accept any salary or honorarium, since I feel that, in the position you wish me to occupy, I should be wholly independent of the government or civil service.' He said 'Done!' and that was that. I became chairman of A.C.S.P. and was able to resign the chairmanship of the Chemical Board and membership of the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Supply, and get rid of one or two other small but at times irksome commitments. I never regretted taking on A.C.S.P., whose chairman I remained until just before its dissolution on the advent of a Labour administration in 1964. I shall have occasion to mention the events leading to my resignation later, but I believe that, if we had had associated with A.C.S.P. a full-time scientific adviser in the Cabinet Office, it would have given us a more effective instrument for the development of science policy than anything we have had since. Meanwhile, all sorts of other things had been happening.