War of words: the public science of the British scientific community and the origins of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1914–16

Abstract

In late 1916 the British Government finally bowed to pressure from scientists and sympathetic elements of the public to organize and fund science centrally and established the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Since just before the turn of the century state funding for science had steadily increased: the National Physical Laboratory was established in 1899, the Development Commission in 1909 and the Medical Research Committee in 1913. The establishment of the DSIR marked an end to piecemeal support and it was therefore a watershed when the state

finally accepted its responsibility to fund science properly, to develop a coherent science policy and thus recognise that science and scientists were crucial components of modern national life; not just in wartime, but in the development of the peacetime economy as well.

At least this is how the history of the DSIR is currently still represented. The following analysis is more sensitive than previous treatments as it points out that the state's organization of a centrally planned and funded national policy for science began before the DSIR, and that this new body (in its support of pure research) reflected priorities established before the outbreak of the war. In previous accounts the DSIR was presented as a total break with the laissez-faire past. So, as historians we no longer follow the special pleading of the contemporary science lobby in arguing that the state was deaf to the needs of modern science. However, I want to argue that we are still deaf to the wider concerns of this contemporary pro-science rhetoric, which argued not only for centrally planned and funded science, but also often that scientists themselves should make policy for science.