Alexander Todd - A Time to Remember

Future developments in science and technology cannot be predicted; none of us can foresee the discoveries which will be made or the technologies to which they will give rise. All we can say - and that with some certainty - is that they will surprise us. But what we do know from the recent history of our own country is that the survival of a great nation and the standard of living enjoyed by its citizens depend on their ability and readiness to be in the forefront of new technologies as they emerge. And the best way of doing this is to be master of the science on which these technologies rest. In other words those countries will be the most successful which make discoveries in science and then exploit them through technology. Our record in discovery is good but during this century our performance in the highly competitive area of technological innovation has been, to say the least, disappointing. To recover the economic ground we have lost as a result will demand a greatly enhanced effort (and perhaps also a change of heart) on the part of our people. But any recovery - and we have the opportunity for one now through nature's gift of North Sea oil - will be of short duration if we cut back on our scientific research for financial or other reasons without considering the effect our economies may have on our future stock of scientists. There is, I fear, a good deal of evidence to suggest that we may even now be mortgaging our future in this respect.

During the past year the Officers and Council of the Society have been much involved in efforts to promote the development of research groups around promising research scientists. Such activity was foreshadowed in remarks I made in my Anniversary Address in 1977 and I am glad to say that we are now making progress. Although the amount of money available to us is small in relation to the overall need we hope the contribution we can make will not be wholly insignificant and may have the effect of encouraging other bodies to promote first-class research and raise the morale of those who are capable of doing it. For morale is still low in our universities and especially so among the younger members of the academic research community. The evidence for this is circumstantial and perhaps to some extent subjective but I believe the decline has now reached a point at which not only urgent consideration but also action is called for if not only our research but our whole university system is not to suffer permanent damage.

It is common to put the blame for this on the stagnation of the British economy and the consequent shortage of money for education and research. Our economic difficulties certainly play a large part but I believe the real root of the trouble lies in the misguided euphoria which in the early sixties caused us - in common with most other industrialised countries - approximately to double the number of our universities and greatly to expand our student numbers. No one would seriously dispute the thesis that higher education (tertiary education would perhaps be a better expression) should be available to all those able to benefit from it, but in those heady days higher education was equated with university education of the traditional pattern. How wrong this was has been amply demonstrated by subsequent events. The sudden expansion in student numbers involving as it did the entry of many with no real motivation for the type of education provided by our traditional universities (and which was, by and large, adopted by all the new ones) was in my view a material factor in the disturbances which marked the late sixties and early seventies. The universities survived the shock of these student disturbances surprisingly well but the long-term effects of the sudden and prodigious expansion of higher education are now becoming increasingly apparent. They are, in fact, basically demographic although in many respects exaggerated by our nation's economic decline.

The rapid growth of the university system in the 1960s brought about a vast expansion in tenured staff usually by the recruitment of relatively young men and women taken from the normal supply of university graduates and not invariably of the highest quality. Many, if not most, of these remain today at the same institutions and are likely to do so for perhaps another two decades under the tenure system which is almost universal. This phenomenon is, of course, not confined to the United Kingdom and it is giving increasing concern in most other industrialised countries, including the United States. The secretariat of the European Science Foundation has tried to collect and analyse such statistical material on university staffing as is available for a number of European countries (United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland) and has published its findings in the Report of the Foundation for 1978. The results are strikingly similar for all the countries examined. Broadly speaking, they indicate that in most European countries the age distribution of teaching staff in universities is now at a level where 50%, or in some of them as much as 60% of the staff has an average age of about forty. The figures show, too, that in the countries examined in more detail (i.e. those listed above) the majority of those in post today will remain in office until the mid-1990s, when they will begin to reach retirement age. The demand for replacements during the next fifteen years or so will be exceedingly low and the effect could well be exaggerated if economic difficulties cause universities to economize by the short-sighted policy of suppressing posts that become vacant (this has, indeed, already occurred). The overall result both on research and teaching could be disastrous and persist for many years.

A detailed study of chemistry departments in British universities has been made by Professor Colin Eaborn who summarised his findings thus:

At present only 7.8% of the staff of chemistry departments are below 35 years of age; the proportion will probably fall to about 4% in five years' time and rise to only about 9 % in ten years time. The proportion below 40 years of age, now 26% will fall to about 12.5% in five years and to about 10% in ten years time. During those ten years the proportion of staff over 50 will rise from the present 28% to about 62%. These figures have serious implications for British chemistry, and thus for the chemical and other science-based industries.

Indeed they have - and the situation in other physical sciences is unlikely to differ greatly. Viewing Europe as a whole, the European Science Foundation suggests that the chance for a junior research assistant to reach a permanent university appointment has gone down from about 70% during the 1960s to about 15% in this decade. The outlook is indeed bleak, faced as we are with a continued ageing of university staffs over nearly two decades and a denial to departments of the invigoration which younger recruits can bring to them. The other side of the coin is that younger scientists who would in previous decades have made a solid contribution to research in an academic environment will now be denied that opportunity and either abandon research or seek a career elsewhere. Surprising though it may seem, the academic research profession has within a few years been transformed from one of the most mobile to one of the most static. This is particularly so in the United Kingdom, where the economic stagnation of recent years has all but staunched the flow of academics in mid-career into other occupations. Many young scientists are seeking to retain their present precarious positions by hand-to-mouth grants because they fear that a change to another university or research institute might jeopardise their chance of obtaining a permanent appointment. This same attitude is probably responsible for the falling-off in applications received by the Society for fellowships under the European Exchange Scheme. To many, it would seem, the risk of losing a small chance which may exist at home seems too great for all but the most venturesome to follow the path of their predecessors, who normally received some part of their training abroad. In such circumstances it may well be that the diminishing chance of obtaining a university position could lead to a kind of negative selection process among those who stay at home, and in any case it militates against international scientific cooperation and understanding.