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Pure Science with a Practical Aim: The Meanings of Fundamental Research in Britain, circa19161950
Author(s): By Sabine ClarkeReviewed work(s):Source: Isis, Vol. 101, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 285-311Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/653094 .
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Pure Science with a Practical Aim
The Meanings of Fundamental Research inBritain, circa 19161950
By Sabine Clarke*
ABSTRACT
Historians tell us that the term fundamental research entered the discourse of science inthe interwar period as a synonym for pure science and that both terms referred to workconcerned with the search for knowledge, without thought of application. The aim of thispaper is to show that when the expression fundamental research was used in Britainduring and after World War I, it had a particular status that was not equivalent to purescience. In the annual reports of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research(DSIR) fundamental research was endowed with multiple meanings, including workthat was orientated towards some practical goal. The fluidity of the meaning of funda-mental research in the reports of the DSIR can be understood as a strategy; fundamentalresearch was a rhetorical term that served to persuade more than one audience of the
legitimacy of the DSIR and its policies.
HISTORIANS AND SOCIOLOGISTS of science have urged us to consider the con-
tingent nature of the meanings of the expressions science and technology, and the
rhetorical and ideological use of these terms. The terms fundamental research and basic
research, however, have largely been treated as fixed concepts in histories of twentieth-
century science. Some recent literature has attempted to locate the first use of these
expressions in the period between 1930 and 1950, and has considered the reasons for their
uptake by commentators on science during the course of the twentieth century. Funda-mental research and basic research are said to have came into widespread use as
alternatives to the older expression pure science. It is claimed that when used by
scientists in the twentieth century, fundamental research, basic research, and pure
* Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, 45-47 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE,United Kingdom.
I would like to thank David Edgerton, Waqar Zaidi, and the anonymous referees of Isis for the extremelyhelpful comments that were given on various drafts of this article.
Isis, 2010, 101:285311
2010 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
0021-1753/2010/1012-001$10.00
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science referred to the same thingwork concerned with the acquisition of scientific
knowledge, without thought of application.1
This paper is concerned with the use of the expression fundamental research in
Britain by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), created in 1916.
The term fundamental research had not been previously used by government bodies forresearch in Britain, such as the Development Commission or the Medical Research
Committee, and it is difficult to know for certain where the expression had come from.
One thing is certain, however; the term had been in use from an earlier period than that
identified by Ronald Kline who suggests that discomfort with some of the connotations of
the term pure science led to the introduction of the term fundamental research during
the 1930s by industrial researchers in America. The journal Science used the phrases
fundamental research and fundamental science in articles on the organization and
funding of agricultural science in the United States as early as 1895.2
In Britain, fundamental research was a term that came into common use as part of a
discourse that accompanied the creation of new state-funded research bodies, beginning
with the DSIR. This discourse was not concerned with characterizations of the nature of
science, but was concerned specifically with defining the nature of research as this activity
increasingly became the focus of attention by the state and industry. This paper considers
the rhetorical nature of this research discourse as expressed in the official publications of
the DSIR. This discourse generally avoided invoking the ideal of pure science. Instead, the
DSIR spoke of the need to support fundamental research, and did not treat that research
as equivalent to pure science as scholars have claimed.
In its focus on language this paper is a contribution to a body of scholarship that has
sought to investigate the strategies employed in scientific discourse to construct and
disseminate knowledge claims, demarcate science from non-science, and assert the cul-
tural value of science. Literature of the last type, focused on Britain in the first half of the
twentieth century, has often been informed by the notion of public science proposed by
Frank Turner; he has encouraged scholars to consider proclamations on the nature of
science as a rhetoric concerned with gaining such things as financial support and policy
influence for scientists.3 In addition, historians of medicine have produced increasingly
1 Otto Mayr, The Science-Technology Relationship as a Historiographical Problem, Technology andCulture, 1976, 17:663672; Thomas Gieryn, Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists, American Sociological Review, 1983,48:781795; Walter G. Vincenti and David Bloor, Boundaries, Contingencies and Rigor: Thoughts on Math-
ematics Prompted by a Case Study in Transonic Aerodynamics, Social Studies of Science, 2003, 33:469507,p. 488; and Peter Dear, What is the History of Science the History Of? Early Modern Roots of the Ideology ofModern Science, Isis, 2005, 96:390406. On the terms fundamental research and basic research seeRonald Kline, Construing Technology as Applied Science: Public Rhetoric of Scientists and Engineers inthe United States, 18801945, Isis, 1995, 86:194221, pp. 216 and 217; Benot Godin, Measuring Science:Is There Basic Research Without Statistics? Social Science Information, 2003, 42:5790; and Jane Calvert,Whats Special about Basic Research? Science, Technology and Human Values, 2006, 31:199220. In fact,Calvert claims that Kline states that basic research replaced the term pure science in public proclamationsof industrial researchers during the 1930s, when his statement was about the term fundamental research. Godinwrites, between 1930 and 1945 then, numerous labels were used for more or less the same concept: pure,fundamental, background and basic: Godin, Measuring Science, p. 62.
2 Kline relates how Frank Jewett complained to Vannevar Bush in 1945 that the term pure science impliedthat more applied kinds of work done by industrial researchers were impure: Kline, Construing Technology
as Applied Science, p. 217. For an example of Science using fundamental research and fundamentalscience, see J. C. Arthur, Development of Vegetable Physiology, Science, 1895, 2:360373.3 On studies of strategies in scientific discourse see, for example, Steven Yearley, Textual Persuasion: The
Role of Social Accounting in the Construction of Scientific Arguments, Philosophy of the Social Sciences,1981, 11:409435; G. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay, Opening Pandoras Box: A Sociological Analysis of
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fine-grained analyses of the rhetorical aspects of declarations about the relationship
between the laboratory sciences and clinical practice around the time of World War I. This
work has included examination of ways in which this rhetoric could embody broader
anxieties about the state of the nation. It has also examined how rhetoric that claimed
opposition or demarcation between science and the clinic was often belied by theexistence of close working relationships between scientists and doctors in medical
schools.4 In a similar vein, this paper shows that the ideal of pure science promoted by
public scientists around the time of World War I exercised very little influence on the
character of policies that were being developed for the funding and organization of
research. The fact that the DSIR did not claim a unidirectional flow of knowledge from
pure science to applied science gives credence to the view recently expressed by David
Edgerton in a discussion of the linear model; he warned that we should be careful of
assuming that some supposed guiding principles of twentieth-century science policy were
actually promulgated by actors in the past.5 A close examination of the texts of the DSIR
reveals that actors had more nuanced understandings of the interplay between research and
practice than they sometimes have been credited for, and that they also knew the
difference between the rhetoric of official documents and journals, and the nature of
scientific work in practice.
In this paper the annual reports of the DSIR are shown to be a key site for the production
of a public rhetoric concerned with the status of this new department, state-science-
industry relations, and the political economy of research in Britain. Faced with a poten-
tially skeptical, even hostile, reception from industrialists and some quarters of the
scientific community, the rhetoric discerned in the annual reports of the DSIR had the goal
of persuading readers that public funding of research was desirable, that industry should
invest in research, and that some organization of science by government was necessary.
This rhetoric hinged on particular definitions of the term fundamental research. In the
annual reports of the DSIR the term fundamental research had a mutable quality. Rather
than attempting to distill a more stable meaning, I will argue in this paper that multiple
Scientists Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984); Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987); Anne Holmquest, The Rhetorical Strategy of Boundary-Work, Argumen-tation, 1990, 4:235258; and Charles Alan Taylor, Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation (Madison:Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1996). On the notion of public science in Britain see Frank M. Turner, Public Sciencein Britain, 18801919, Isis, 1980, 71:589608; Richard R. Yeo, Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Sciencein Britain, 18301917, in The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method, ed. J. A. Schuster and Yeo (Dordrecht:D. Reidel, 1986), pp. 259297; and Andrew J. Hull, Food for Thought? The Relations Between the Royal
Society Food Committees and Government, 19151919, Annals of Science, 2002, 59:263298.4 On the rhetoric of physicians in the interwar period see Christopher Lawrence, Still Incommunicable:
Clinical Holists and Medical Knowledge in Interwar Britain, in Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine,19201950, ed. C. Lawrence and G. Weisz (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 94111; and especiallyDavid Cantor, The Name and the Word: Neo-Hippocratism and Language in Interwar Britain, in ReinventingHippocrates, ed. D. Cantor (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 280 301. For an increasingly nuancedunderstanding of the relationship between science and the clinic in practice see David Smith, The Use ofTeamwork in the Practical Management of Research in the Inter-War Period: John Boyd Orr at the RowettResearch Institute, Minerva, 1999, 37:259280; Andrew J. Hull, Teamwork, Clinical Research and theDevelopment of Scientific Medicines in Interwar Britain: The Glasgow School Revisited, Bulletin of theHistory of Medicine, 2007, 81:569593; and Steve Sturdy, Scientific Method for Medical Practitioners: TheCase Method of Teaching Pathology in Early Twentieth-Century Edinburgh, Bulletin of the History ofMedicine, 2007, 81:760792.
5
For the claim of a unidirectional flow of knowledge see Tom Wilkie, British Science and Politics Since 1945(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 11. David Edgerton, The Linear Model Did Not Exist: Reflections on theHistory and Historiography of Science and Research in Industry in the Twentieth Century, in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin and Nina Wormbs (New York: Watson, 2004),pp. 3157.
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meaning was important if we consider the function of the annual reports produced by new
government bodies for research created in the first half of the twentieth century.6 The
fluidity of meaning of fundamental research in the reports of the DSIR can be under-
stood as a strategy; fundamental research was a rhetorical term that served to persuade
more than one audience of the legitimacy of the DSIR and its policies. The DSIR statedthat it would support through grants the pure science activities of university scientists.
Scientists were also to be reassured that the fundamental research the DSIR sought to
promote at the laboratories of industrial research associations was work that examined the
most in-depth, underlying, or indeed, fundamental issues; this was work that would
contribute to scientific theory and lead to advances in knowledge. Importantly, this work
was stated to be both scientifically important and practically useful, and the starting point
for this fundamental research was the need to address a practical issue. Unlike the term
pure science, the term fundamental research was flexible enough to convince readers
associated with industry that researchers would not be receiving funds so that they might
merely satisfy their scientific curiosity.Fundamental research was also defined at times as research into general issues, as
distinguished from research that addressed discrete or more limited problems. Character-
izing fundamental research as either broad, general, or as background research, was
important for the negotiation of matters of political economy. General research explored
issues common to a group of firms in a particular sector. It was contrasted with research
into specific issues, the problems that were particular to an individual company. The DSIR
stated that it would not be supporting the latter. In this way, the definition of fundamental
research as research into general issues offered a route for state sponsorship of science that
did not compromise the tenets of liberal political economy. While the DSIR investigated
the broadest possible issues, it was left to private business to address the problems that
arose in the context of its own local and particular needs. A similar rationale worked to
justify the expenditure of funds on research by organizations such as the National Physical
Laboratory (NPL) and the Food Investigation Board (FIB). These organizations were said
to explore issues that were so widespread and important that no business or industrial
sector in Britain could reasonably be expected to deal with them. The justification for
government funding of bodies such as the NPL and FIB was that the fundamental research
these organizations carried out dealt with issues of such widespread and general impor-
tance to the prosperity of the nation that fundamental research was, in effect, national
research. This research had, therefore, a strong claim on public funds.After World War I, the term fundamental research was used in the reports of other
state bodies created in Britain to fund research such as the Medical Research Council, the
Agricultural Research Council, and during the 1940s, the Colonial Research Committee.
These bodies generally avoided invoking the concepts of pure and applied science. The
meanings given in the reports of these government bodies to the expression fundamental
research were not exactly those used by the DSIR, however. The meanings of this term
were, to a degree, contingent; they were informed by the particular context in which the
research bodies were established and operated.
6 In other words, following an approach advocated by Quentin Skinner, the question the historian can posewhen reading the reports of the DSIR is not so much what do these reports mean? but rather, what was theDSIR doing? in writing these texts. See Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 2002), Vol. 1, p. 100.
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THE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was the product of Board of
Education recommendations expressed in the Scheme for the Organisation and Devel-
opment of Scientific and Industrial Research, published in 1915. The DSIR was created
in 1916 as a government department staffed by civil service administrators, with anadvisory council of scientists who guided the department in making decisions about
personnel for new projects, terms of employment for researchers, and projects suitable for
funding. The chairman of the advisory council was Sir William McCormick and the
secretary of the department was Frank Heath, both non-scientists drawn from the Board
of Education.7 The department was not headed by a minister but was overseen by a
committee of the Privy Council. Heath reported to the lord president who represented the
DSIR in parliament.
The main focus of the DSIR was to ensure an adequate supply of scientific researchers
for industry in the long term and to encourage some sectors of British industry to spend
more on research. It also established research programs in areas considered to be impor-tant for national prosperity, such as food and fuel. To achieve its aims the department
offered grants to university workers, initiated a scheme by which industrial research
associations could receive grants for cooperative research, and oversaw the running of
national research boards and laboratories. In the immediate term there was also a call for
projects of pressing wartime importance, such as the work of Professor Herbert Jackson
on optical glasses previously only available from Germany.8
Existing historical literature on the DSIR tends to be very narrow in focus, and is often
concerned with discussions at the Board of Education immediately leading up to the
creation of the department. There has been a tendency in some accounts to repeat
uncritically the assertion that shortages of key imports with the outbreak of World War Iforced reluctant politicians and civil servants to recognize the deficiency of British
science, and the backwardness of British industry, in comparison to that of Germany. In
fact, while the war provided the opportunity to create new state machinery to fund and
coordinate scientific research and scientific education, interest in supporting these objec-
tives had long existed at the Board of Education and among some politicians and
high-ranking civil servants, notably Christopher Addison and Lord Haldane. David Edgerton
and Sally Horrocks have also shown the picture of absolute neglect of research by British
industry to be misleading. British firms were conducting scientific research before World
War I, notably the United Alkali Company, Cadbury, Noble, and Vickers, and it has
proven difficult to substantiate the claim that British industry was far behind that ofGermany in its spending on research. The more general problem with many accounts of
the DSIR has been a tendency by scholars to focus on making an assessment of its success
7 Board of Education, Scheme for the Organisation and Development of Scientific and Industrial Research,Cd. 8005 (1915), British parliamentary paper (HMSO, London). The advisory council formed in May 1915consisted of Sir George Beilby (industrial chemist and chairman of the Royal Technical College, Glasgow),Raphael Meldola (industrial chemist and head of Finsbury Technical College), Richard Threlfall (industrialchemist), William Duddell (consulting engineer), J. A. McClellan (chair of experimental physics at UniversityCollege, Dublin), Bertram Hopkinson (engineer and professor of applied mechanics at University of Cambridge),
and the mathematician and physicist, Lord Rayleigh. See Ian Varcoe, Scientists, Government and OrganisedResearch in Great Britain, 19141916: The Early History of the DSIR, Minerva, 1970, 8: 192216, p. 207.8 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 7818 (19161917). Annual reports cited of the DSIR and other government
organizations are command papers (Cd. or Cmd.) presented to the British Parliament, published by HMSO,London hereafter.
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or failure that reflects the concerns of the particular writer, rather than focusing on any
debates that occurred at the moment of the DSIRs establishment. In addition, evaluating
the contribution of the DSIR to British science policy, or to state and science relations,
misses the point that the DSIR was specifically concerned with research, not science per
se. The significance of the department resides in its contribution to what can be called therise of research during the first half of the twentieth century. The challenge facing the
department was the negotiation of greatly increased intervention in the organization of
scientific research, and the negotiation of new areas of intervention by the state with
respect to British industry. The DSIR looked for inspiration in a number of areas. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, one of these was the development of industrial research laboratories in
some large American firms. Less obvious, and certainly not acknowledged in the existing
literature, was the attention the DSIR paid to the rise of government-sponsored agricul-
tural research in America.9
It is clear from the files and annual reports of the DSIR that the department faced
problems in persuading British scientists and British industry that its establishment and its
goals were necessary and legitimate. The situation of the DSIR was made particularly
difficult by the hostile response to the formation of the department from a vocal lobby of
scientists that expressed discontent in the pages ofNature, and directly to the department
in letters. At the same time, the DSIR was concerned that industrial managers would need
education and persuasion before they were willing to invest in cooperative research, and
that British industry did not have a strong tradition of trade association. Also, spending of
public funds on industrial research needed to be organized so as to avoid the accusation
that the state was supporting work that should be paid for by business; state intervention
in industrial affairs needed to be carefully delimited.
Central to the purpose of the annual reports for the DSIR, therefore, was the need for
this organization to legitimate its establishment and its mode of operation, and obtain the
endorsement of scientists and industrialists. This need influenced the ways in which the
department defined the research it wished to support in its public statements. It was
important, for example, to describe research in the annual reports as an activity susceptible
to some degree of organization. The DSIR made frequent use of the expression funda-
mental research, and in order to understand fully the meanings of this term as used by the
DSIR we need to consider in some detail how pure science was defined in this period.
Here I am following Quentin Skinner who has suggested that in attempting to grasp the
meanings of the texts of the past, we need to focus not merely on the particular text in
which we are interested but on the prevailing conventions governing the treatment of the
issues or themes with which the text is concerned.10
Andrew Hull has shown that the creation of the DSIR prompted a fierce response from
a lobby of scientists that included prominent figures such as Richard Gregory, the editor
of Nature, and members of the National Union of Scientific Workers and the British
9 Varcoe, Scientists, Government and Organised Research (cit. n. 7); Peter Alter, The Reluctant Patron:Science and the State in Britain, 1850 1920 (Oxford: Berg, 1987), pp. 203204; R. MacLeod and E. K.Andrews, The Origins of the DSIR: Reflections on Ideas and Men, 19151916, Public Administration, 1970,48:2345; D. E. H. Edgerton and S. M. Horrocks, British Industrial Research and Development Before 1945,
Economic History Review, 1994, 47:213238; H. Frank Heath and A. L. Heatherington, Industrial Research andDevelopment in the UK; A Survey (London: Faber and Faber, 1946); David Edgerton, Science, Technology andthe British Industrial Decline, 18701970 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996). The DSIRs interest inAmerican Agriculture is expressed in DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 28.
10 Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics (cit. n. 6), p. 100.
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Science Guild. In a number of books, and articles and editorials in Nature, this lobby
mobilized a rhetoric intended to ensure that scientists in Britain retained control of the
research agenda in the face of what was perceived as increasing control of research by the state.
The fact that the DSIR was a body administered by non-scientists prompted the claim that
scientific research was passing out of the hands of scientists into the hands of bureaucratsand industrialists, and this would lead to the dominance of applied problems. The response
to this supposed threat to the autonomy and status of researchers was the promotion of
pure science by public scientists such as Richard Gregory.11 Drawing on the claims of
many scientists and laymen since the nineteenth century, this rhetoric referred to the ideal
of pure science as the search for knowledge for its own sake, to work done without thought
of any commercial or practical gain.12 While pure science was said to be work that was
done without thought of application, public scientists around the time of World War I
nonetheless claimed pure science was the essential prerequisite for applied science.
In some cases, the rhetoric produced by British scientists around the time of World War
I took the form of a denial that scientific knowledge could be independently produced by
applied science. This view was summed up in 1917 by the physicist William Bragg:
There is no applied science distinct from pure science. There are applications of pure
science, that is all. This was a comment that relied heavily for inspiration on the often
repeated remark by Thomas Henry Huxley: What people called Applied Science is
nothing but the application of Pure Science to particular classes of problems. Huxley is
arguably the most famous individual to have claimed that only pure science actually
existed and that everything else was merely the application of this knowledge, although
the same point was made by the American physicist Henry Rowland in his 1883 essay, A
Plea for Pure Science.13 Braggs comment appeared in the book, Science and the Nation,
a series of essays written by eminent British scientists on the relations between pure and
applied science. The book was inspired, according to the introduction by Lord Moulton,
by fears among scientists that there would be neglect of pure science with state recognition
11 Andrew J. Hull, Passwords to Power: A Public Rationale for Expert Influence on Central GovernmentPolicy-Making: British Scientists and Economists, c. 19001925 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Glasgow, 1994), pp.107115 and 8283. Hull uses the term public scientists as defined by Frank Turner. Turner referred to thoseindividuals who consciously attempt to persuade the public or influential sectors thereof that science bothsupports and nurtures broadly accepted social, political and religious goals and values, and that it is thereforeworthy of receiving public attention, encouragement, and financing. See Frank M. Turner, Public Science inBritain (cit. n. 3), p. 590.
12 Robert F. Bud and Gerrylynn K. Roberts state that the teaching of science was increasingly divided intopure and applied from the 1870s onwards in England, with the Devonshire Commission playing animportant role in formally expressing what these categories might be: Science Versus Practice: Chemistry inVictorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 140151. Similarly, Kline comments thatAmerican scientists did not regularly use the term pure science until the 1870s. In general, accounts tell us thatas the distinction between pure science and applied science was drawn up in the nineteenth century, purescience was constructed as university science. The pursuit of pure science was presented as morally improvingfor students, in part because it was not inspired by the search for profit. See Ronald Kline, ConstruingTechnology as Applied Science (cit. n. 1), p. 199; and Michael Aaron Dennis, Accounting for Research:New Histories of Corporate Laboratories and the Social History of American Science, Social Studies of Science,1987, 17:479518. On the rise of the idea of pure science as work done for its own sake see George H. Daniels,The Pure-Science Ideal and Democratic Culture, Science, 1967, 159:16991705.
13 William Bragg, Physical Research and the Way of Its Application, in Science and the Nation, ed. A. C.
Seward (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1917), pp. 2448, on p. 39; and T. H. Huxley, Science andCulture, Collected Essays (London: MacMillan, 1893). This particular remark of Huxleys appears at thebeginning of Science and the Nation (p. 155), as well as in the text of the first annual report of the DSIR(19151916). Ronald Kline quotes Rowlands as saying, to have the applications of science, the science itselfmust exist: Kline, Construing Technology as Applied Science (cit. n. 1), p. 199.
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of the need to fund industrial research. The book made it plain to the reader that pure
science was essentially the driving force behind industrial prosperity and the better-
ment of the race. The essayists claimed that invention resulted from the application of
discoveries in pure science, and illustrated this point with examples of famous scientific
discoveries such as x-rays.14
A similar device was used by Gregory in his book of 1916, Discovery or The Spirit and
Service of Science; Gregory listed seven inventions that had been voted by the readers of
the American periodical Popular Mechanics as the seven wonders of the modern world,
namely wireless telegraphy, the telephone, the airplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins,
spectrum analysis, and x-rays. Gregory then stated, each one of these things had its
foundations in purely scientific work and was not the result of deliberate intention to make
something of service to humanity. He proceeded to take each invention in turn and chart
its origins in pure science.15
The claim was that pure science was an activity that should not be directed to meet
specific practical goals, but fortuitous discoveries in pure science meant it was this activity
that was the origin of useful invention. The defense of pure science as the undirected quest
for knowledge was an attempt to preserve the autonomy of scientific researchers and
ensure that research did not just become an activity that worked towards goals established
by the state or industry. When Gregory or Bragg made their case for pure science their
goal was to ensure the professional standing of researchers in the light of the perceived
threat presented by the DSIR.
PURE SCIENCE IN THE REPORTS OF THE DSIR
During the early years of its existence the DSIR made a number of allusions to the
necessity of maintaining support for pure science that might at first glance appear to be a
thorough endorsement of the claims of the public science lobby of Gregory and others.
Reference to pure science was made in the context of DSIR discussion of the individual
grants it issued to university scientists. In its reports the DSIR described the universities
as the natural homes of work in pure science, and attempted to assure the reader that the
funds it offered would not mean university research would be orientated solely towards
applied science as claimed by the public science lobby. The remarks made by the DSIR
indicate that it was aware that its work was under scrutiny and that some scientists had
made fierce criticisms of the form in which it had been instituted, as well as its goals. It
was important that the DSIR define itself in ways that its scientific audience would
endorse or it might forfeit the support of this particular group. The DSIR used a strategy
of championing the ideal of pure science; this strategy included explicit reference to works
produced by leading members of the lobby that had most forcefully rejected the DSIR on
its formation.16 The DSIR repeated the claim of Gregory that useful inventions were the
result of chance discoveries in pure science, and emphasized in their fourth report that the
state cannot, and must not, attempt to organize pure science.17
14 Seward, ed., Science and the Nation, pp. viii, vi (quotations), 26, and 39.15 Wireless telegraphy has its origin in the work of Clerk Maxwell and Hertz; the telephone depends upon
the principles of magneto-electric induction discovered by Faraday; Langleys investigations of the resistance ofthe air to moving bodies led him to construct the first working model of an aeroplane: Richard A. Gregory,Discovery or The Spirit and Service of Science (London: MacMillan, 1916), p. 235.
16 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), pp. 11 and 15.17 Professor R. A. Gregory has shown conclusively that each one of the modern practical applications of
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While on the one hand the DSIR worked hard to indicate consensus with the prevailing
rhetoric on the primacy of pure science, more detailed descriptions of how the DSIR
intended to organize Britains scientific resources tended to obscure, and even negate, this
apparent agreement. One issue noted by the DSIR was the difficulty in practice of trying
to categorize scientific work as either pure or applied. Until 1922, the DSIR classified theuniversity grants it issued to researchers as pure or applied science with the majority of
DSIR grants said to be falling within the realm of pure science. A brief explanation by the
department of the rationale in operation when distinguishing between the two categories
of science, however, suggests that the term pure science indicated a researcher working
in a department of pure science, usually chemistry or physics. Accordingly, a grant labeled
applied science referred to work undertaken in what was often called a technological
department, including engineering, metallurgy, mining, brewing, and economic botany,
usually at a redbrick university. The label of pure or applied science was not necessarily
descriptive of the actual degree of practical relevance of the work undertaken.18 The DSIR
stated that work in a field such as engineering, which was not defined as a field of pure
science, could still make a contribution to scientific knowledge: The method of classi-
fying researchers as pure and applied calls for a word of comment. In some cases a
research which is primarily one in pure science may lead to results which can be applied
to economic or industrial problems. On the other hand a research in an engineering subject
may be of a fundamental character and unlikely to lead directly to results of immediate
commercial value, though classified as applied.19 A remark of this kind confused the
distinction between pure and applied science that was upheld by Gregory and others, and
suggested that scientific knowledge could be derived from work in applied science. The
conclusion finally arrived at by the DSIR was that attempts to distinguish between pure
and applied science were misconceived.20 After 1922, grants were classified according to
the subject area in which the work sponsored was considered to fall, with the vast majority
falling in the field of chemistry.
If in its public proclamations the DSIR felt pressure to demonstrate its support for pure
science in the university by showing that the larger proportion of its grants could be
considered to fall within this category, that pressure did not translate into criteria for
determining whether or not an individual received a grant. Decisions as to the funding of
university researchers did not necessarily reside in a consideration of whether their work
was pure or applied, or even in a consideration of the works subject. It would be wrong,
for example, to assume that the DSIR issued grants for projects according to their potential
relevance to industrial problems.21 The criteria that were used in the allocation of
studentships and fellowships were summed up in the third annual report of 1918: Inmaking these awards to students we have been guided primarily by our knowledge of the
quality of the research work undertaken by the Professor or Head of the Department who
recommends the student, by the opportunities which he has for engaging in research work,
science, from wireless telegraphy to antitoxins, had its foundations in purely scientific work, and was not theresult of deliberate intention to make something of service to humanity: DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336(19151916), pp. 3334. For the DSIRs emphasis that the state must not organize pure science see DSIR 4thAnnual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 13.
18 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919). On the difficulty of trying to categorize scientific work
see DSIR 17/81, 10/4/18, p. 73, National Archives, London.19 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 73.20 Ibid.21 A grant was given to Karl Pearson in 19181919 for work on statistics and eugenics: DSIR 4th Annual
Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 74.
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and by his personal recommendation of the student as one who shows promise of
becoming a competent research worker after a suitable training.22
The concern was to create greater numbers of individuals who had been trained in the
methods of research; the most important criteria were aptitude for research shown by the
researcher, and the quality of the training they would receive. The DSIR believed its roleas a body that organized science for the benefit of the country meant it had a duty to
consider the provision of scientific manpower for the future. If industry, for example, was
to make good use of scientists then there needed to be an adequate supply, and the best
preparation for these workers was training in research methods.23
Elsewhere in its reports the DSIR made comments that undermined its erstwhile
promotion of the ideal of pure science as the undirected search for knowledge for its own
sake. The DSIR was charged with the organization of the scientific resources of the nation
and had a stated goal of bringing science and industry into a closer relationship. Recon-
ciling the need to ensure that industry benefited from Britains scientific resources with the
need to ensure the cooperation of scientists was considered potentially difficult. One issue
was summarized in 1916 as being a question of how to establish a connection between
individual manufacturers and a University in a manner which will bring the advanced
student, the University organization and the individual firm into co-operation for research
without hampering the academic freedom of the University professor or endangering the
property in any results which may belong to the manufacturer.24
The view was expressed that greater cooperation between science and industry could be
achieved if university departments concerned with fields such as engineering, mining, or
metallurgy, made efforts to assist industries with the research needed for the solution of
particular problems facing them. The problems that faced manufacturing would, at times,
be the inspiration for research. This had implications for the DSIRs definition of pure
science:
Pure science has in the past owed much to observations, suggestions and difficulties which havecome from activities external to the laboratory or the study. So will it be again; and it is ourdesire so to order the relations of workers in pure science to the industries going on aroundthem that they may receive the stimulus of a wider outlook than is always attainable under thelimitations of an academic system of syllabus and examination.25
Pure science, it seems, could sometimes be undertaken with a specific end in view.26 The
notion that pure science could be driven by something other than just the curiosity of the
scientist was a significant departure from the rhetoric of the public science lobby.By the time the fourth annual report was issued in 1919, the idea that it was dangerous
and even fatal to attempt to organise pure science was qualified by the statement, on the
other hand it is necessary for a modern State to organise research. Perhaps one of the
DSIRs strongest proclamations on its own role in the organization of Britains scientific
resources was made in 1920: One of the most obvious lessons of the war for peoples like
our own, whose organisation is weak, was that rapid progress in the use of science with
22
DSIR 3rd Annual Report, Cd. 9144 (19171918), p. 39.23 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 33.24 Ibid., p. 31.25 Ibid, p. 16.26 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 13.
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a view to defence or to increased production is not to be expected in any country which
depends simply upon the undirected genius of its people.27
Concessions were made to university scientists however. During wartime the DSIR had
insisted on vetting the results of all work prosecuted with its help to determine if it
provided any commercial advantage to foreign firms. This requirement was suspended foruniversity grants after the end of the war despite the reservations expressed by Heath that
Britain ran the risk of foreign firms capitalizing on the results of British research if it was
freely published. Free publication had to be allowed, however, because of the mental
outlook of English men of science. In other words, English scientists would not tolerate
measures that appeared to restrict freedom of publication.28 On more practical grounds, the
conditions placed on publication by the DSIR were ammunition for its critics: It is the
more difficult for us to retain these conditions in peace because they are not attached to
similar grants made by the Medical Research Committee to research workers in Physi-
ology and the allied sciences. The difference in procedure between the two bodies is
naturally discussed at the Universities and the bureaucratic tendencies of this Department
emphasised.29
The references by the DSIR in its public statements to a prevailing rhetoric on the
primacy of pure science were an attempt to demonstrate to a scientific readership that the
interventions of the DSIR in the field of university research would not mean that
researchers would be forced to undertake work directed to ends determined either by a
government department or by industry. In its public declarations, he DSIR upheld the
notion that universities were places for pure science. However, the DSIR did not adhere
to the claims about the nature of pure science that had been made by the lobby headed by
individuals such as Gregory. The DSIR claimed that research in the university could be
inspired by the need to resolve practical problems in industry, and that some university
departments should work harder to develop a close relationship with local manufacturing.
The result was a confused and inconsistent series of declarations on the nature of pure
science that reflected a conflict between the need to reassure scientists that the department
would not be dictating the nature of their research, and a belief that science in Britain must
be better organized to benefit the nation.
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH IN THE ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE DSIR
The DSIR did not use the term pure science when discussing the work done by the
research associations that had been created with the aim of encouraging scientific research
by British industry. Some of the first associations included the British Iron Manufacturers
Research Association, the British Photographic Research Association, and the British
Research Association for the Woollen and Worsted Industry. In order to encourage the
formation of these research associations, the British government created a Million Fund
through which it would contribute a pound for every pound paid to fund scientific work
by industry, up to a limit of 1 million. By the time the Million Fund had been depleted
in 1932, there were twenty research associations, and most of these were given further
funds by the state. Many of these associations acquired their own laboratories, as well as
funding work done at universities and colleges. The DSIR expressed its conviction that the
27 Ibid.; and DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920), p. 13.28 DSIR 17/70, 4/3/21, National Archives, London.29 DSIR 17/81, 2/6/19, National Archives, London.
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joint funding of industrial research by the state and industry would be an important means
of demonstrating the value of research to British industry.
The view of Heath and McCormick in 1916 was that industrial managers would need
to be persuaded of the merits of spending on scientific research. Despite the claims made
that the outbreak of war had demonstrated the defects of British industry and the absolutenecessity of British firms becoming as scientific as it was said they were in Germany, it
seems that many British firms simply did not feel they were in crisis as their plants were
fully occupied. As McCormick expressed it, so long as an industry is prosperous it is very
apt to take short views and feel little enthusiasm for systematic research. At the same
time, it was said that some firms were suspicious of government attempts to encourage
them to form associations among themselves, believing that cooperation in the funding of
research would diminish the advantage held by individual companies.30 Even if firms
within a particular sector could be persuaded of the value of science, the DSIR believed
that industrialists could be quite ignorant of what constituted research. The DSIR
thought industrialists would have to receive some education in order to understand that an
easily resolvable technical manufacturing problem was not actually research as the
DSIR defined it. The DSIR referred to loose use of industrialists and company promoters
of the word research to describe experiment by trial and error.31 The DSIR reports of
the first seven years of its existence devoted much space to the elaboration of the type of
work the new research associations should aspire to do. In setting out a vision of industrial
research, the DSIR made it clear that it expected manufacturing interests to move beyond
a concern with the solution of mere practical problems and should focus more on
fundamental research:
The particular difficulties encountered in the day-to-day routine of manufacture, the possibilityof improving a process, of diminishing cost of working, enlarging output or enhancing thequality of a product, are matters which we may expect the individual firm to attack directly itbegins to believe at all in the application of science to its own trade. But this is not enough. Weare looking for a growth of a demand for fundamental research, and fundamental research, aswe have seen, requires a very large expenditure on brains and equipment. It also requirescontinuous effort. The firm that starts out upon this quest must either be very powerful or itmust find the necessary strength in association with others.32
In its first annual report, published during the war in 1916, the DSIR declared that
the urgent nature of the problems facing Britain, coupled with shortages of manpower
and equipment, meant that the priority of the department in the short term would be
the application of science to industrys most pressing issues. An initial focus ontechnical issues that would furnish quick results was considered a useful way to
convince industrialists to invest more in fundamental research. The DSIR stated that
a precedent existed showing that businessmen impressed with quick returns from
practical problem solving by scientists could then be persuaded to support research of
a more in-depth and long-term character: It was in this way that the Universities of
the middle states of America convinced the farmers that science was useful to
agriculture.33
30 DSIR 17/5, 11/4/16, National Archives, London; and DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917), p. 14.31 DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 30.32 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 41.33 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 28.
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In the period between 1895 and 1913, American agricultural scientists wrote articles in
Science, often reprinted in Nature in Britain, arguing for an increase in fundamental
research at agricultural experiment stations. The experiment stations were considered to
spend most of their time on routine work and investigations intended primarily to meet
the immediate needs of farmers and orchardists. According to Henry Prentiss Armsby(professor at Pennsylvania State College) in a 1906 article in Science, it was time for
agricultural investigations to be shifted to work of a broad and fundamental character
with scientific investigation into the underlying principles of agriculture.34 Armsbys
article and others evoked the need for fundamental research and described this as work
that was more in depth than the investigations that had previously been done at the
experimental stations; it was work that moved beyond routine fertilizer analysis, for
example. Fundamental research was described as work that would expose the underlying
principles that governed everyday phenomena. It was also research that had a wider value
than the specific and discrete inquiries related to the needs of local farmers; it was broad
and it established principles. The reasons why American researchers did not describe thiswork as pure science may have been related to the fact that it was not research that was
located in the universities. Perhaps more importantly, these articles were intended to
persuade potentially skeptical state and national authorities to provide additional funds for
research activities in agriculture.35 Calling this work pure science may have removed
these investigations too far from agricultural practice to secure extra money for the
experimental stations.
The DSIR defined the fundamental research needed by British industry along very
similar lines to those used in discussions of agricultural research in the United States. The
term fundamental research was used in discussions of the work of the research asso-
ciations with the intention of differentiating between proper research and other activities
carried out by firms using technical staff. If the latter work dealt with superficial or
practical issues, then research that was fundamental moved from ad hoc problem solving
to a consideration of the underlying qualities and behavior of industrial materials or
processes.
The DSIR attempted to clarify its point by describing how the various scientific
activities undertaken by industry required a range of different sites. The modern firm that
had embraced this type of organization was likely to be found in the United States and the
DSIR provided a description of the ideal company by Charles Kenneth Mees, the British
chemist who headed the research laboratories of Eastman Kodak in New York State.Mees, it reported, had described three types of industrial laboratory: the works labora-
tory involved in routine testing and quality control, the efficiency laboratory that refined
and improved the products and processes of the firm, and the true research laboratory.
34 H. J. Webber, A Plan for Publication for Agricultural Experiment Station Investigations, Science, 1907,26:509512. On lobbying for increased government funding for agricultural research during the 1880s seeCharles E. Rosenberg, Science, Technology and Economic Growth: The Case of the Agricultural ExperimentStation Scientist, Agricultural History, 1971, 45:120; Margaret W. Rossiter, The Emergence of AgriculturalScience: Justus Liebig and the Americans, 18401880 (New Haven/London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975); Paolo
Palladino, Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America 18851985(Amsterdam: Harwood, 1996), p. 31; and Henry Prentiss Armsby, The Promotion of Agricultural Science,Science, 1906, 24:673681.
35 On the campaign that led to the passing of the Adams Act see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Adams Act:Politics and the Cause of Scientific Research, Agricultural History, 1964, 38:312.
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This last venue was concerned with work directed not towards the superficial processes
of industry but towards the fundamental and underlying theory of the subject.36
In discussions of the work of the research associations, examples were given of suitable
projects in fundamental research that included the determination of the constitution of
cotton fibers, the composition of rubber and resins, and the relationship between chemicalcomposition and mechanical properties in alloys. At the same time, fundamental research
investigated processes of manufacture, such as the determination of the most effective
methods of stirring or melting to protect optical glass from furnace gases.37 In this usage,
long-term fundamental research into the underlying principles that governed an industrial
process or that produced knowledge about the nature of materials, was contrasted with
short-term work that produced early commercial results or looked to the solution of
immediate practical problems. The fact that fundamental research was presented as
desirable because of the power over industrial methods and materials it would afford to
those who invested in it, rather than because it helped achieve some more esoteric goal of
progress within a particular scientific discipline, suggests that it was a term the DSIRemployed specifically to address the industrialist. Fundamental research was defined as
work that considered the most basic materials utilized by industry, or the key processes
that industry depended upon, and it was not, for example, defined primarily as work in
chemistry or physics. In stating that its objective was the encouragement of more
fundamental research, rather than pure science, the DSIR was able to claim that the
activities prosecuted under its aegis were done with practical goals in mind, and not
merely to satisfy the whim of scientific researchers. The need to reassure industrial
managers that the science they supported financially was aimed, first and foremost, at
bringing benefits to the firm is shown by a comment made in 1925. In a discussion of
ceramics research undertaken on behalf of the British Refractories Research Association,
it was stated that better explanation of this work in lay terms should be distributed to firms
comprising the research association to convince members that they are not subsidising a
corps of scientific dreamers.38
The importance of making a distinction between pure science, and fundamental re-
search furnishing useful results, is also shown in an address given in 1921 to the Royal
Society by its president, Charles Scott Sherrington. Sherrington praised the system of
research that had developed in Britain due to the dovetailing of all the different compo-
nents of professional and scientific societies, universities, and government-funded insti-
tutions. When discussing the Development Commission, created in 1909, which providedresearch funds for agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, Sherrington wrote: Its programme
of fishery research, avoiding the terms pure research and applied research in view of
the possible implication that pure research does not lead to practical results, directs
research not alone to the solving of particular economic problems. It supports more
36 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 29.37 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916); and DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917). The
British Photographic Research Association was credited in 1921 with having devoted its attention to researchesof a fundamental character that included the derivation of a fundamental law for the true photographicrendering of contrast: DSIR 6th Annual Report, Cmd. 1491 (19201921), p. 30.
38 DSIR 10/6, Report of the committee appointed to inspect the British Refractories Research Association,National Archives, London.
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especially what it terms free research, investigations in this case of the fundamental
science of the sea and marine life.39
In the DSIRs report of 1922, a subtle distinction was made between fundamental
research and pure science in a brief meditation under a heading referring to the industrial
research associations (Nature of Research Undertaken by the Associations). Here theDSIR stated that the key difference between pure and fundamental research was that of the
stimulus for the work in the first place:
The general tendency in pure research is to follow the train of thought of greatest scientificinterest by pursuing the problem initially selected through all the ramifications which maypresent themselves, or at least through all those which interest the investigator. The phenomenainvestigated and the taste of the research worker are, in most cases, the only directive forces.In industrial research, on the other hand, the aim is more definitely objective; the work has adistinct purpose in view which the investigator must bear in mind constantly. He cannot affordto follow attractive by-paths unless he believes they will lead him to a relevant destination. Theproblems of industry draw attention to gaps in scientific knowledge which it is the duty of the
industrial researcher to fill. The acquisition of such knowledge may be called fundamentalresearch as applied to industry for, without it, far-reaching changes and improvements inindustry are almost impossible.40
While the DSIR drew a distinction between pure science and its programs of funda-
mental research, it defined the latter in relation to pure science. As with pure science,
fundamental research was work that was intended to secure greater knowledge, but this
time the search was inspired by the need to address a practical problem. Fundamental
research, here equated with industrial research, was presented as a utilitarian form of pure
science. So while the DSIR wished to convince the reader that the work it sponsored
through the research associations would be useful, it did not deny the existence of purescience, and it claimed some correlation between the concepts of pure science and
fundamental research. Fundamental research was pure science organized to meet some
practical objective.
Why did the DSIR feel the need to relate its definition of fundamental research to pure
science in this way? Was it because the notion of pure science conferred a certain prestige
upon the scientific worker? At a time in which the concepts of pure science and applied
science were particularly charged, perhaps the DSIR felt it important to reassure its
scientific audience that autonomy and status would not be compromised through work
with the DSIR. At the same time, the DSIR carved out a definition of fundamental
research intended to persuade industry that long-term, laboratory-based research under-taken by professional scientists would be prosecuted with the aim of solving important
practical problems, and not merely to satisfy scientific curiosity. Fundamental research
was a term flexible enough to work with two different groups of readers.
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH AS GENERAL RESEARCH
If definitions of fundamental research in the reports of the DSIR indicated that this work
was done with a practical goal in mind, in ways that prevalent definitions of pure science
did not, then we might ask what relationship the DSIR thought should develop between
39 C. S. Sherrington, The Maintenance of Scientific Research, Nature, 1921, 108:470471, p. 470 (quota-tion).
40 DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 30.
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fundamental research and short-term, practical problem solving. Applied science was said
to be nothing but the application of knowledge gained through pure science, and therefore
pure science was the essential prerequisite for problem solving. In contrast, fundamental
research was said by the DSIR to be a method for understanding widespread underlying
phenomena in contrast to the solution of discrete problems. The relationship betweenfundamental research and other types of investigation presented most often by the DSIR
was one in which fundamental research established knowledge about the materials and
processes common to a group of firms, leaving individual companies to deal with
problems that were specific to that particular business. Fundamental research was work
that established universal theories or laws that remained constant from company to
company within a particular sector of industry; it was general research. The more
fundamental a piece of research was, the more widespread were the phenomena under
investigation, and by the same token, the more potentially important its results. In this
arrangement, there was supposedly plenty of room for research by the scientist employed
by the individual company.
When firms were brought together in the research associations to fund research into
common problems, this research would necessarily be fundamental since it investigated
universals. It was up to the individual firm to address the particular problems that arose
within its work. By proclaiming that the work of the DSIR was to encourage fundamental
work in industrial research, the DSIR could avoid the suggestion that public grants favored
the interests of one individual firm over another:
Research undertaken exclusively for the benefit of one among a number of competing firmseither by a public institution or at the cost of the State is indeed always likely to give rise todifficulties. Universities and public Research Institutes are maintained by endowments and
public funds for the common good, and any arrangement which gives exclusive rights orbenefits to a single firm as against others in the same industry is not easy to reconcile with thepublic advantage.41
Similarly, the Development Commission had stated that when it came to issuing research
funds for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, it was important to ensure that money shall
not go into the pockets of private individuals.42
The sponsorship of fundamental research through the DSIR provided a means for the
state to take action to encourage the use of science by British industry without interfering
in, or directing, the business of the firm. The definition of fundamental research as work
that was general and broad in its scope, and furthest from the specific issues faced by any
individual company, allowed government to take some role in the development of
industry, but at arms length. As the DSIR wrote in 1916, when co-operation has done
all that is possible in the common interest, there still remain a mass of research work to
be done by individual firms in their own interests, which will amply repay the cost and
effort. If fundamental research was cooperative research, the DSIR claimed that, on the
other hand, pure science was not necessarily work that was best prosecuted cooperatively
and the existence of different schools of thought and the independent attacks which result
from them are positive advantages. Interestingly, the department did not seem to think
that association between firms for the sake of research would result in collusion such as
41 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), p. 31.42 First Report of the Proceedings of the Development Commissioners for 19111912, No. 305, p. 5 (British
Parliamentary paper).
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price fixing: The result of research being available to all members of the industry would
tend to induce competition and to restrict prices.43
In addition to the cooperative research done by the research associations, the DSIR
claimed a further category of research in which it should take an interest. This work was
described as sufficiently fundamental to affect a range of interests wider than a singletrade while also having a direct bearing on the health, well-being, or the safety of the
whole population. Described as the most fundamental of all the research sponsored by the
DSIR, the work included food preservation research, fuel research, research into building
materials, operating the Geological Survey and Museum, and the work of the National
Physical Laboratory.44 There was a clear sense in which this work was classified as
fundamental because it examined some of the basic necessities of all domestic and
industrial life such as food, coal, and precise electrical and physical standards. It was
research that was of the widest possible use and because so many national activities
depended on these things, it was important. Again, the very fundamental quality of this
work, which made it both extremely important and of such a scale that it was beyond the
scope of an individual companys responsibility, provided a rationale for state intervention
and support. The general nature of fundamental research meant that it could be done at the
expense of the taxpayer. This fundamental research was work that was so general that
plenty of room was left for the individual firm to investigate particular implications. In the
case of fuel research, which involved a survey of the characteristics of the nations coals,
the following was stated in 1919: The investigations of the Fuel Research Board,
however successful they might be, will only establish fundamental data and broad
generalisations as a basis for particular applications. And these applications must be
worked out by the industries themselves.45
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH AT THE FOOD INVESTIGATION BOARD AND THE NATIONAL
PHYSICAL LABORATORY
While the DSIR described the work of its research organizations and laboratories as
fundamental on the basis that their investigations were wide in scope and potential
importance, the organizations themselves could emphasis other aspects of the term
fundamental research. The Food Investigation Board (FIB) was established in 1918, and
was concerned with food preservation, the freezing of fish, the putrefaction of meat, and
the storage of fruit.46 The FIB version of fundamental research was academic work in
43 DSIR 1st Annual Report, Cd. 8336 (19151916), pp. 14 and 16; and DSIR 16/2, Memorandum to serveas a basis for discussion of the question of the associations for research, 15/12/16, National Archives, London.
44 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917), p. 17; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920),p. 18; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920); and DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 173 (19211922),p. 12. The DSIR took over the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) from the Royal Society in 1918. The NPLswork was initially concerned with the elucidation of physical standards, and research into optical glass,metallurgy, aeronautics, and radio. As well as devising its own research programs, during the 1920s and 1930sthe NPL carried out work through the coordinating boards on behalf of industry, the DSIRs research boards, andother government departments (very often including service departments such as the Admiralty).
45 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 65. The Fuel Research Board was involved in theclassification of coal throughout the country, with analysis of its constituents and carbonization. The aim was to
generate data to be used by business. At the same time, the Board investigated the machine cutting of peat, theefficiency of grates, and air pollution: DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920).46 On the Food Investigation Board see Sally M. Horrocks, Consuming Science: Science, Technology and
Food in Britain, 18701939 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Manchester, 1993), pp. 223263; and Hull, Food forThought? (cit. n. 3).
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physiology, biochemistry, and biophysics. For example, the FIB wrote in 1919: Results
cannot be looked for quickly. They will be attained the more certainly and speedily by
intensive study of those branches of science which need strengthening. In another
example a year later, the board wrote, the fundamental scientific problems underlying the
preservation of food is, in the present critical state of world supply, a clear nationalnecessity . . . everything should be done to hasten the development of the new sciences of
biochemistry and biophysics and the application of the results to national practice. The
FIB constructed a relationship between fundamental research and other fields of investi-
gation in which the only route to practical results was through research in the biological
sciences. The first director of the FIB, William Hardy, was reported as saying in an
address to the British Association of Refrigeration: The industry is essentially a biolog-
ical industry. Biological thought and biological research fix the conditions necessary for
successful storage, and to the cold-storage engineer is left the duty of realizing those
conditions in practice. Logically, biology has precedence. For a body such as the FIB that
attempted to fashion an academic identity, it was important that readers were persuaded
that its researchers worked on scientific problems rather than practical ones; fundamental
research was defined accordingly. It also seems possible that Hardy wished to ensure that
when it came to determining the nature of new food technologies the balance of power lay
with the biochemists and physiologists he favored, and not engineers.47 Interestingly, the
FIB never attempted to introduce the term pure science into discussions of its work.
As with the FIB, the National Physical Laboratory was described in 1920 as one of a
number of bodies that dealt with problems of such wide application that no single
industry, however intelligent or highly organised, could hope to grapple with effectively.
In the case of the NPL, the study of materials in their physical characteristics and the
establishment of accurate methods of measuring them and testing them and the products
made from them, are as important to industry and to the progress of science as they are
impossible of achievement by private effort.48 (See Figure 1, Figure 2, and Frontispiece.)
Hence, the work of the NPL was described by the DSIR as fundamental in the sense that
it dealt with issues that occurred on such a scale that it was not reasonable to expect
business to fund and prosecute this research. This sense of fundamental meant that the
NPL was able to refer regularly to its fundamental standardisation work, the work that
was done at the laboratory to determine, and then disseminate, accurate physical and
electrical standards. This work was fundamental in that it was work of the widest potential
application that produced results underpinning many industrial and academic projects.
However, within the body of its reports the NPL used fundamental research as a way
of differentiating between its more practical projects and research work. In fact, we couldargue that for the image the NPL attempted to project within its reports after World War
I, it was the research element of the term fundamental research that was most
important. While the work of the NPL consisted of plenty of practical investigations such
as the testing of laboratory glassware and clinical thermometers, and the rating of cables
for the Admiralty, the laboratorys general board was clear that the NPL was a place of
47 DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (19181919), p. 40; DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920),p. 23; and DSIR 23rd Annual Report, Cmd. 5927 (19371938), p. 11. Hardy died in 1934 and therefore was
quoted in the twenty-third report. Hardy was keen to use his position with committees such as the Royal SocietyFood (War) Committee to exert control of food policy in Britain and it could be that that his claim as directorof the FIB that biological research would provide solutions to national problems was also part of his lobbyingfor wider political influence. See Hull, Food for thought? (cit. n. 3).
48 DSIR 5th Annual Report, Cmd. 905 (19191920), pp. 18 and 24.
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research. When it was suggested that the NPL take on the role of a national body for
testing electrical appliances, for example, this suggestion was rejected on the grounds that
routine work of this order was not an appropriate function for the laboratory.49 Sir William
Ellis reportedly told the general board in 1919:
The question of commercial testing has always been one which it is somewhat difficult for theExecutive Committee precisely to define, for it is obvious that the primary object of the NPL
for Research purposes would be largely interfered with if commercial testing, which can beefficiently done by professional bodies existing in the country for the purpose, were carried outextensively at the Laboratory. It is certainly more the province of the Laboratory to investigatescientific problems of a research character than to carry out any large volume of work on acommercial basis, in view of the country possessing professional men ready to undertake suchwork.50
49 DSIR 2nd Annual Report, Cd. 8718 (19161917); and DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922).Within the body of its reports (published in the DSIR annual reports), the NPL distinguished between test workand research. In DSIR 7th Annual Report, Cmd. 1735 (19211922), p. 47, it was said, the volume of test work
for shipbuilding firms carried out in the William Froude National Tank has decreased somewhat, no doubtlargely owing to the fall in production, but good progress has in consequence been made with the programmeof research approved by the Tank Advisory Committee. This program was concerned with the resistance ofships in waves, and ship maneuvering. See DSIR 4th Annual Report, Cmd. 320 (1918-1919), p. 31.
50 DSIR 10/2, Meeting of the General Board of the NPL, 19/12/19, National Archives, London.
Figure 1. The fifty meter corridor for testing surveying tapes and wires at the National PhysicalLaboratory, United Kingdom. The National Physical Laboratory: A Short Account of its Work andOrganisation (London: HMSO, 1924). Permission given by the National Physical Laboratory,
Queens Printer and Controller of HMSO.
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A comment such as this has to be considered in the light of an issue that had resulted in
an enquiry, headed by Gerald Balfour, into the work of the laboratory in 1908. Complaints
had been made, chiefly by the Institute of Chemistry, that the commercial testing work of
the laboratory amounted to unfair competition. The NPL was accused of undermining the
work of professional chemists in the field of materials testing by providing the same
service at a lower rate. The NPL offer of cheaper services, and the cachet attached toresults issued by a government laboratory, was said to potentially undermine the private
testing business of some chemists and possibly engineers. In the views of some, routine
testing of materials was not the province of the NPL which should instead restrict itself
Figure 2. Column testing machine at the National Physical Laboratory, United Kingdom. TheNational Physical Laboratory: A Short Account of its Work and Organisation (London: HMSO,1924). Permission given by the National Physical Laboratory, Queens Printer and Controller ofHMSO.
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to general research of the most widespread utility.51 Fundamental research, as general
research, was the appropriate activity for a state-funded body in contrast to routine testing
since fundamental research did not encroach on the commercial activities of chemists and
engineers.
For the scientists of the NPL, the pursuit of programs of fundamental research, ormerely research, was important in order to maintain the standing of the laboratory as a
national institution for physics. With the end of the war, the board of the NPL was keen
to see many of its departments return to the pursuit of the fundamental scientific work
that was considered part of its natural role. In November 1922, the NPL established a new
research committee with a view to making the fullest use, for the purposes of funda-
mental research, of the resources of the Laboratory. This committee consisted of the
eminent physicists J. J. Thomson, William Bragg, and Ernest Rutherford, and it began by
devising programs of research in modern physics.52 A designated Physics Building was
built at Teddington, Middlesex, for these new research programs. Within the context of the
reports of the NPL, then, fundamental research could refer to academic or theoretical
studies, the pursuit of which bestowed status on the laboratory.
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH DURING THE 1930S AND 1940S
The 1930s saw a decline in the use of the expression fundamental research by the DSIR
in its annual reports. At the same time, there was very little evidence of the rhetoric that
described bodies such as the NPL, the Fuel Research Board, or the Food Investigation
Board as organizations primarily involved in this type of work. The reports show a
broadening of the terms involved to describe the projects and investigations done under
the auspices of the DSIR and its associations. Within this diversity, we can find expres-sions such as comprehensive investigations, investigations into basic problems, and
on one occasion, the term foundational research. Many investigations were not classi-
fied at all within the reports of the DSIR, with just the presentation of specific details of
the completed work and the results. The 1948 report of the DSIR saw the first widespread
use of the term basic research as a synonym for fundamental research.53 As had been
the case with fundamental research, basic research referred to investigations that were
thorough and time-consuming in comparison to short-term projects that addressed urgent
specific enquiries, or in the post-war language of the DSIR, long range strategic inves-
tigations versus immediate tactical investigations. As with fundamental research,
basic research also referred to general investigations as a broad background for local
and specific enquiries.
A decline in the exposition of the importance of fundamental research during the
51 Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee Appointed by the Treasury to Enquire Generally into the
Work Performed by the National Physical Laboratory, Cd. 3927, pp. 3, 18, 23, 19, 27 (British Parliamentarypaper).
52 DSIR 10/2, Meeting of the General Board of the NPL, 19/12/19, National Archives, London. The directorJ. E. Petavel was reported to say, the Laboratory hopes to return in many of its departments to the fundamentalscientific work which is naturally one of the features of a national institution. On the establishment of the newresearch committee see DSIR 8th Annual Report, Cmd. 1937 (19221923), p. 56 (quotation).
53
For the use of broadened terms for research see annual reports of the DSIR for the 1930s. The DSIR wrotein 1948, the Committee in their report, invited attention to the comparatively small amount of civil engineeringresearch being done in the universities, and emphasized the desirability of increasing the contribution of theuniversities to basic or fundamental civil engineering research to scale more in consonance with the nationalimportance of the subject: DSIR 33rd Annual Report, Cmd. 7761 (19471948), p. 40.
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interwar period may have reflected a sense among officials at the DSIR that the standing
of the department was more assured. Not all the research associations had actually been
engaged in the pursuit of fundamental research, despite the discussion of its importance
in the reports of the DSIR, and this may have been one reason why the phrase was not
routinely used about their work beyond the early years. The Research Association ofBritish Rubber and Tyre Manufacturers, for example, stated the following as early as
1921:
Those responsible for the founding of this Association have realised that the importance ofresearch to industry lies not so much in the possibility of very occasional discoveries of arevolutionary nature as in the sure benefits which are the abundant fruit yielded by theapplication of science to the improvement of existing methods. The functions of the Associ-ation, while not excluding the study of fundamental problems, include more prosaic consid-erations such as improvement in the control of manufacturing operations and the testing of rawmaterials and final products.54
This tendency of research associations to focus on the solution of practical problems
appears to have been acknowledged in the DSIR annual report of 1931: A noticeable
feature during the past year has been a wide recognition by research associations of the
necessity to give increasing attention to the day-to-day problems encountered by firms in
their ordinary processes of manufacture. Privately, Heath had stated at an early stage that
the DSIR was not, in fact, willing to insist that research associations conform to any
definition of fundamental research when it came to their research plans. He wrote in a
letter to a cotton manufacturer in 1918 that the government had no intention of limiting
the work of the Associations to pure or fundamental or direct research because in
practice it was impossible to draw the line.55 This comment confirmed that the term
fundamental research was used more for its rhetorical value than for any real attempt at
classification of scientific work. Categories of pure science or fundamental research
were of little importance in determining the allocation of funds by the DSIR but they were
very important in its representation of goals during its early years.
During the interwar period and after World War II, the term fundamental research
was found in a variety of additional locations, one of which was the reports of other
research bodies that were government-funded. Fundamental research was used in
discussions of state-funded medical and agricultural research from the 1920s onwards, and
in the organization of colonial research during the 1940s. The Agricultural Research
Council (ARC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) did not often use the term pure
science, thus indicating that an activity defined in terms of its great distance from utilitywas not considered an appropriate description for work receiving state funding that was
intended to benefit human health and national prosperity. However, while sometimes
using the expression fundamental research, neither the MRC or the ARC undertook the
type of lengthy discussion regarding its nature and importance found in the DSIRs annual
reports. This was probably relate