Britain's Science

- Cheberle Bianca
- Clasa XII-a D

The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid
in the promotion and development of science.Until 2009 it was known as the British
Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chief Executive is Katherine
Mathieson. The BSA's mission is to get more people engaged in the field of science by
coordinating, delivering, and overseeing different projects that are suited to achieve these goals.
The BSA "envisions a society in which a diverse group of people can learn and apply the
sciences in which they learn." and is managed by a professional staff located at their Head
Office in the Wellcome Wolfson Building. The BSA offers a wide variety of activities and events
that both recognize and encourage people to be involved in science. These include the British
Science Festival, British Science Week, the CREST Awards, Huxley Summit, Media
Fellowships Scheme, along with regional and local events.
The Association was founded in 1831 and modelled on the German Gesellschaft Deutscher
Naturforscher und Ärzte. It was founded during post-war reconstruction after the Peninsula war
to improve the advancement of science in England.The prime mover (who is regarded as the
main founder) was Reverend William Vernon Harcourt, following a suggestion by Sir David
Brewster, who was disillusioned with the elitist and conservative attitude of the Royal Society.
Charles Babbage, William Whewell and J. F. W. Johnston are also considered to be founding
members. The first meeting was held in York (at the Yorkshire Museum) on Tuesday 27
September 1831 with various scientific papers being presented on the following days. It was
chaired by Viscount Milton, President of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and "upwards of
300 gentlemen" attended the meeting. The Preston Mercury recorded that those gathered
consisted of "persons of distinction from various parts of the kingdom, together with several of
the gentry of Yorkshire and the members of philosopher societies in this country". The
newspaper published the names of over a hundred of those attending and these included,
amongst others, eighteen clergymen, eleven doctors, four knights, two Viscounts and one Lord.
From that date onwards a meeting was held annually at a place chosen at a previous meeting.
In 1832, for example, the meeting was held in Oxford, chaired by Reverend Dr William
Buckland. By this stage the Association had four sections: Physics (including Mathematics and
Mechanical Arts), Chemistry (including Mineralogy and Chemical Arts), Geology (including
Geography) and Natural History.
During this second meeting, the first objects and rules of the Association were published.
Objects included systematically directing the acquisition of scientific knowledge, spreading this
knowledge as well as discussion between scientists across the world, and to focus on furthering
science by removing obstacles to progress. The rules established included what constituted a
member of the Association, the fee to remain a member, and the process for future meetings.
They also include dividing the members into different committees. These committees separated
members into their preferred subject matter, and were to recommend investigations into areas
of interest, then report on these findings, as well as progress in their science at the annual
meetings.
Additional sections were added throughout the years by either splitting off part of an original
section, like making Geography and Ethnology its own section apart from Geology in 1851, or
by defining a new subject area of discussion, such as Anthropology in 1869.
A very important decision in the Association's history was made in 1842 when it was resolved to
create a "physical observatory". A building that became well known as the Kew Observatory
was taken on for the purpose and Francis Ronalds was chosen as the inaugural Honorary
Director. Kew Observatory quickly became one of the most renowned meteorological and
geomagnetic observatories in the world. The Association relinquished control of the Kew
Observatory in 1871 to the management of the Royal Society, after a large donation to grant the
observatory its independence.
In 1872, the Association purchased its first central office in London, acquiring four rooms at 22
Albemarle Street. This office was intended to be a resource for members of the Association.
One of the most famous events linked to the Association Meeting was an exchange between
Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860 (see the 1860 Oxford evolution
debate). Although it is often described as a "debate", the exchange occurred after the
presentation of a paper by Prof Draper of New York, on the intellectual development of Europe
with relation to Darwin's theory (one of a number of scientific papers presented during the week)
and the subsequent discussion involved a number of other participants (although Wilberforce
and Huxley were the most prominent). Although a number of newspapers made passing
references to the exchange, it was not until later that it was accorded greater significance in the
evolution debate. One of the most important contributions of the British Association was the
establishment of standards for electrical usage: the ohm as the unit of electrical resistance, the volt
as the unit of electrical potential, and the ampere as the unit of electrical current.[23] A need for
standards arose with the submarine telegraph industry. Practitioners came to use their own
standards established by wire coils: "By the late 1850s, Clark, Varley, Bright, Smith and other
leading British cable engineers were using calibrated resistance coils on a regular basis and were
beginning to use calibrated condensers as well."[23]: 52 

The undertaking was suggested to the BA by William Thomson, and its success was due to the use
of Thomson's mirror galvanometer. Josiah Latimer Clark and Fleeming Jenkin made preparations.
Thomson, with his students, found that impure copper, contaminated with arsenic, introduced
significant extra resistance. The chemist Augustus Matthiessen contributed an appendix (A) to the
final 1873 report[24] that showed temperature-dependence of alloys.

The natural relation between these units are clearly, that a unit of electromotive force between two
points of a conductor separated by a unit of resistance shall produce unit current, and that this
current in a unit of time convey a unit quantity of electricity.

The unit system was "absolute" since it agreed with previously accepted units of work, or energy:

The unit current of electricity, in passing through a conductor of unit resistance, does a unit of work
or its equivalent in a unit of time.
The Association introduced the British Association (usually termed "BA") screw threads, a series of
screw thread standards in sizes from 0.25 mm up to 6 mm, in 1882. The standards were based on
the metric system, although they had to be re-defined in imperial terms for use by UK industry. The
standard was modified in 1884 to restrict significant figures for the metric counterpart of diameter
and pitch of the screw in the published table, as well as not designating screws by their number of
threads per inch, and instead giving an approximation due to considerable actual differences in
manufactured screws. In 1878 a committee of the Association recommended against constructing
Charles Babbage's analytical engine, due to concerns about the current state of the machine's lack
of complete working drawings, the machine's potential cost to produce, the machine's durability
during repeated use, how and what the machine will actually be utilized for, and that more work
would need to be done to bring the design up to a standard at which it is guaranteed to work.

The Association was parodied by English novelist Charles Dickens as 'The Mudfog Society for the
Advancement of Everything' in The Mudfog Papers (1837–38).

In 1903, microscopist and astronomer Washington Teasdale died whilst attending the annual
meeting.

The Association's main aim is to improve the perception of science and scientists in the UK.
Membership is open to all.[citation needed]
At the beginning of the Great Depression, the Association's focus began to shift their purpose to
account for not only scientific progress, but the social aspects of such progress. In the
Association's 1931 meeting, the president General Jan Christiaan Smuts ended his address by
the proposal of linking science and ethics together but provided no means to actuate his ideas.
[31][32]
In the following years, debate began as to whom the responsibilities of scientists fell upon.
The Association adopted a resolution in 1934 that dedicated efforts to better balance scientific
advancement with social progress.[32]
J.D. Bernal, a member of the Royal Society and the British Association, wrote The Social
Function of Science in 1939, describing a need to correctly utilize science for society and the
importance of its public perception.[33][34] The idea of the public perception of science was
furthered in 1985 when the Royal Society published a report titled The Public Understanding of
Science.[35]

Sir George Porter

In the report, a committee of the Royal Society determined that it was scientists' duty to
communicate to and educate the public. Lord George Porter, then president of the Royal
Society, British Association, and Director of the Royal Institution, created the Committee on the
Public Understanding of Science, or COPUS, to promote public understanding of science.
Professor Sir George Porter became the president in September 1985. He won the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry 1967 along with Manfred Eigen, and Ronald George Wreyford Norrish. When
asked about the scientific literacy of Britain, he stated that Britain was the least educated
country compared to all the other advanced countries. His idea to solve this problem would be
to start scientific education for children at the age of 4. He says his reason for such an early age
is because that is the age when children are the most curious, and implementing science at that
age will help them gain curiosity towards all disciplines of science. When asked why public
ignorance to science matters, his response was
It matters because among those who are scientifically illiterate are some of those who are in
power, people who lead us in politics, in civil service, in the media, in the church, often in
industry and sometimes even in education. Think, for example, about the enormous influence of
scientific knowledge on one's whole philosophy of life, even one's religion. It is no more
permissible for the archbishops of today, who advise their flocks on how to interpret the
Scriptures, to ignore the findings of Watson and Crick, than it was right for clerics of the last
century to ignore the work of Darwin. Science today is all-pervasive. Without some scientific and
technical education, it is becoming impossible even to vote responsibly on matters of health,
energy, defense or education. So unless things change, we shall soon live in a country that is
backward not only in its technology and standard of living but in its cultural vitality too. It is
wrong to suppose that by foregoing technological and scientific education we shall somehow
become a nation of artists, writers or philosophers instead. These two aspects of culture have
never been divorced from each other throughout our history. Every renaissance, every period
that showed a flowering of civilization, advanced simultaneously in the arts and sciences, and in
technology too.
Sir Kenneth Durham, former Director of Research at Unilever, on becoming president in August
1987 followed on from Sir George Porter saying that science teachers needed extra pay to
overcome the scarcity of mathematics and physics teachers in secondary schools, and that
"unless we deal with this as matter of urgency, the outlook for our manufacturing future is
bleak".[This quote needs a citation] He regretted that headmasters and careers masters had for many years
followed 'the cult of Oxbridge' because "it carried more prestige to read Classics at Oxbridge
and go into the Civil Service or banking, than to read engineering at, say, Salford, and go into
manufacturing industry".[This quote needs a citation] He said that reporting of sciences gave good coverage
to medical science, but that "nevertheless, editors ought to be sensitive to developments in
areas such as solid state physics, astro-physics, colloid science, molecular biology,
transmission of stimuli along nerve fibres, and so on,[This quote needs a citation] and that newspaper
editors were in danger of waiting for disasters before the scientific factors involved in the
incidents were explained.[citation needed]
In September 2001 Sir William Stewart, as outgoing president, warned that universities faced
"dumbing down" and that
we can deliver social inclusiveness, and the best universities, but not both from a limited amount
of money. We run the risk of doing neither well. Universities are underfunded, and must not be
seen simply as a substitute for National Service to keep youngsters off the dole queue...
[Adding,] scientists have to be careful and consider the full implications of what they are seeking
to achieve. The problem with some clever people is that they find cleverer ways of being stupid.
[This quote needs a citation]

In the year 2000, Sir Peter Williams had put together a panel to discuss the shortage of physics
majors. A physicist called Derek Raine had stated that he has had multiple firms call him up
asking for physics majors. The report they made stated that it is critical that they increase the
number of physics teachers, or it will have a detrimental effect on the number of future
engineers and scientists.