Alexander Todd - A Time to Remember

During 1977 the recession was beginning to bite into research funding, and there was much unease among the general public and among politicians about the 'relevance' of university research and about whether it should be oriented directly to industrial needs; among academics, too, the combined effects of the post-Robbins expansion and financial stringency were widely discussed. My views on these matters formed the basis of my 1977 Anniversary Address and are reproduced in Appendix III, while in 1978 (see Appendix IV) I rejected the gloomy picture of the future painted in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth, and returned again to the problem of freedom of science and the need to beware of external control and direction. Discussion on the right of scientists to choose what research they should pursue had become a very live issue with the advent of recombinant DNA and the potential of genetic engineering. It was held by some that research in these areas should be forbidden because of its possible effects on society; this view I could not, and still cannot, accept.

By 1979 the long-term effects of the sudden and prodigious expansion of higher education in the 1960s were becoming increasingly apparent and were being considerably increased by the financial cuts being imposed on universities in the United Kingdom by the University Grants Committee - cuts which were leading to a breakdown in the dual support system of university research which had in the past been one of the strong points of the British system of financing universities. These topics I dealt with at some length in 1979 (Appendix V). Although apparently unheeded at the time, it was gratifying to see that within a couple of years some movement in the directions I indicated in that Address occurred, and fortunately that movement is continuing. I am convinced that, especially in time of financial stringency, funds available for research should be concentrated on those centres and people doing first-class work and not dissipated over a large number of small units, many of them deficient in quality and contributing very little to progress. Such views are unpopular, but I believe they will in the end prevail; meanwhile, we are learning the hard way!

During my period of office as President I made a number of overseas visits in addition to the South American visit already mentioned. Some of these I made as an individual, e.g. to the Symposium on Natural Products in Moscow and Tashkent in 1978, and to a similar one on the Organic Chemistry of Phosphorus in Burzenin, Poland, in 1979, but others were on official business, involving, in many cases, the completion and signing of formal agreements between the Society and corresponding bodies in the countries concerned. In this way I visited the Soviet Union, China, the Philippines, Egypt, Japan and Jugoslavia, and made several visits to the National Academy of Sciences in Washington - a body with which the Royal Society has always maintained very close relations. During the same period I also represented the Society at the Silver Jubilee of the Australian Academy of Science in 1979, and had the honour, in the same year, to receive the Lomonosov Medal of the Soviet Academy in Moscow.

Two visits paid to Iran during my period of office are worthy of special mention in the light of subsequent events in that country. The Empress Farah - a woman not only beautiful and charming, but very intelligent to boot - was anxious to see science properly organised and developed in Iran, believing that its disorganised state, and the lack of esteem in which it was held, were largely responsible for the emigration (mainly to the United States) of scientists whose loss Iran could ill afford. Her plans included the setting up of an Academy which would bring together the best scientists in the country, and be a kind of nerve-centre for development. To avoid any suspicion of corruption or intrigue in setting up such an academy and electing its first members, she turned to the Presidents of the Royal Society (myself and my immediate predecessor, Sir Alan Hodgkin), the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. (Dr Philip Handler) and of the Japan Academy (Dr Kiyoo Wadati) and, in May 1976, we four were invited to visit Teheran and there, in concert with the Minister for Science and Education, we selected twenty individuals to be the founding members of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Science before returning to our respective countries. The Academy was then founded, and within a couple of years was so well established that Dr Handler and I were invited to attend its annual meeting in Teheran in October 1978. There we each delivered a Pahlavi Memorial Lecture (probably the first and last!) and were formally admitted as the only foreign members of the Academy by the Empress herself, who was its Patron. On my first visit, the only substantial city I visited outside the capital was Isfahan, but neither there nor in Teheran itself was there any sign of unrest; if there was unrest, it was sufficiently concealed to make it invisible to a visitor like myself, unfamiliar with the local language. On the second visit, things were quite different in Teheran; a considerable section of the work force seemed to be on strike, heavily armed troops were on duty, not just around the palace but also around public buildings and parks. There was almost daily trouble in the bazaar, and tanks and armoured troop carriers were a common sight on the main streets. Apart from inconvenience caused by the curfew, which was rigorously enforced, and by striking hotel staffs, the affairs of the Academy went quite smoothly as did our visit to the palace and to various receptions. I recall one of these latter given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and attended by most of the diplomatic corps, at which I had a talk with a group of ambassadors about the situation in Teheran. They agreed that things were a bit difficult, but they gave it as their view that the army would deal with them and that everything would be back to normal in a week or two! Actually what happened in a week or two was full-scale revolution and expulsion of the Shah! On the day I left Teheran the roads leading out of the city were choked with traffic, and chaos reigned at the airport. I confess I was greatly relieved when I finally got on an aircraft and took off for Europe.

I do not know the present position of the Academy, having had no communication from it for some time. I do know that it survived the revolution for I had some correspondence with its administrative secretary, and indeed had a visit from its Honorary Secretary in, I think, 1980. I understood from him that although the word Imperial had been removed from its title the Academy had been allowed to carry on, and that I was still a member. How many Iranian members there are now I do not know; certainly quite a number of the twenty chosen originally by us went into exile. But they may well have been replaced by others.

I have already mentioned how, in 1973, I took over the chairmanship of the Nuffield Foundation. My predecessor resigned largely on the grounds of infirmity due to increasing age and, when I took over, I resolved that I should resign the chairmanship long before I was forced to do so by age and infirmity. Accordingly, when, in the autumn of 1979, I was approaching the age of seventy-two I decided to resign. This appeared to cause some alarm among my fellow Trustees, but I insisted, and formally announced my retirement as from 31 December 1979 (although I continued as a consultant and as an Ordinary Trustee of the Foundation). Much to the amusement of my family, this effort to divest myself of responsibility was not very successful, for, even before my formal date of retirement, I found myself involved in the creation and organisation of a charitable trust in Hong Kong of a similar size and with somewhat similar objects. It happened this way.