The BBC, Scientific Intellectuals and the British Public, 1930-1950
Ralph Desmarais (Imperial College, London, United Kingdom)
Key Research Results
- Overriding Consideration: As a monopoly medium throughout the study period, the BBC was able to exercise control of science content; yet it was constrained by its Charter remit to provide a balance of views where controversy existed, and to both educate and entertain its domestic listeners. Implications followed.
- ‘Defence of science’ theme: promoted by the BBC producers and scientist-contributors alike
- BBC rebuffed repeated attempts by elements of the scientific community to secure control/influence over science programming content. Its institutional independence and its producers’ professional professional autonomy were deemed paramount.
- The diversity of science talks’ content and themes over the study period had many causes; eg:
- a reflection both of producers’ responses to shifting social and political circumstances
- individual producer’s differing styles of programming and preferred speakers
- evolving government guidelines on listeners’ educational needs (eg. 1928 Hadow Report)
- permanent tension between competing aims; eg. stressing ‘pure’ versus ‘applied’ science’; scientific method versus results; education versus entertainment, etc.
- 1930s and wartime BBC science programming did not conform to historical understandings of the British social-relations-of-science (SRS) movement. Ideology-laden radio talks by leftist radical scientists, prominent in the early thirties, ceased by 1936—well before the popular front and SRS movements were at their peak.
- Mary Adams’ 1936 departure from Talks was a turning point
- BBC refused to accept BA’s SRS Division advisory proposals during the war
- Evidence from BBC science talks supports David Edgerton’s argument that scientific intellectuals did not engage with the real relations of science and war; and, with few exceptions, the BBC was equally complicit in this silence.
- BBC radio was a key enabling medium in helping to create and promote ‘scientific intellectuals’. Examples include Gerald Heard and Julian Huxley before 1945, and Jacob Bronowski in the early postwar era.
- CP Snow’s ‘two cultures’ thesis is not an appropriate analytical tool for the early history of BBC science and scientists .
Open Questions
- Comparative European historiography evaluating impact of independent monopoly radio and mixed commercial/state radio environments in relation to science programming, stakeholders, etc.
- Projections of national identity/culture through science programming
- National/Reith Lectures –many scientist speakers
- C.P. Snow’s two-cultures; British ‘declinism’
- We have a limited historical understanding of the contributions by scientific intellectuals to the BBC’s cold war propaganda initiatives---especially on BBC Foreign Services. This despite considerable historical research on BBC, IRD and anti-Soviet propaganda.
- Lysenko; Soviet peace initiatives (cf. the British Peace Committee); Congress for Cultural Freedom
- BBC and the Bomb
- Including international control of atomic energy; British bomb development; nuclear reactor debates, etc.
- European peace movements; Pugwash
- Manhattan Project, Hiroshima and historical revisionism
- Use of the BBC by scientific intellectuals politically-divided by cold war science
- Significance of the BBC Listener journal in relation to other print media has not been historicised
- Educational talks on science have not been historicised; Education was a separate BBC department (from 1927) and provided programming for Schools and Adult Education; sought to comply with Hadow Report (1928) which addressed science education in detail; many scientist-broadcasters in Talks also scripted/delivered talks for Education.
- Science content of Features [dramas, documentaries] has not been historicised
- There is, however, published and unpublished scholarship on the Department history in general terms
- BBC Third Programme (stress on elite culture): most comprehensive histories have focussed on the arts and humanities; we lack a proper intersecting history of science content and reception.
- Questions to be addressed include: impact of talks content on its listenership, many of whom belonged to the nation’s elite cultural and political classes; how ‘science’ was framed in a cold war climate shaped by rival political ideologies and threat of the bomb .
- Cf. 1947 ‘Atomic Week’; 1946 ‘Challenge of Our Time’ series
Further Reading
BBC and Science
- Bowler, Peter, Science for all: the popularization of science in early twentieth-century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
- Desmarais, Ralph, ‘Promoting Science: The BBC, scientists, and the British public, 1930-1945’, (MA Dissertation, University of London, 2004)
- Desmarais, Ralph. ‘Science, Scientific Intellectuals and British Culture in The Early Atomic Age, 1945-1956’. (Unpublished PhD dissertation, Imperial College London, 2010)
- Desmarais, Ralph. ‘Jacob Bronowski: A Humanist Intellectual for an Atomic Age, 1946-1956’, British Journal for the History of Science, 2012 forthcoming.
- Jones, Alan. ‘Speaking of science: BBC science broadcasting and its critics, 1923–64’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation: UCL, 2010)
- Jones, Alan, ‘Mary Adams and the producer’s role in early BBC science broadcasts’, Public Understanding of Science, 2012 forthcoming.
- Falby, Alison. "Gerald Heard (1889-1971) and British Intellectual Culture between the Wars." Unpublished Ph.D., University of Oxford, 2000.
- Friday, J. (1975) ‘The Braggs and Broadcasting’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, vol 47,pp. 59–85
Radio and Science
- Gregory, J., and S. Miller. Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. (New York: Perseus Books, 1998).
- Irwin, A., and (ed.) B. Wynne. Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
- La Follette, Marcel. Science on the air : popularizers and personalities on radio and early television. (London: University of Chicago Press, 2008) [Note: concerns US media]
- Miller, Steve. Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. (New York: Plenum Press, 1998).
- Werskey, Gary. The Visible College : A Collective Biography of British Scientists And. Free Association, 1988).
- Anker, Peder. Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945 (London: Harvard University Press, 2001)
- McGucken, William. Scientists, Society and State. The Social Relations of Science Movement in Great Britain, 1931-1947. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984).
- Broks, Peter. Media Science before the Great War. (London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1996).
- Jones, Greta. Science, Politics, and the Cold War (London: Routledge, 1988).
PEOPLE
BBC Scientific Programming Advisers: Formal Groups and Individuals
Pre 1939:
- General Advisory Council (including Lord Rutherford, FRS; Sir William Bragg, FRS)
- Talks Advisory Committee (including Julian Huxley, FRS)
- both suspended in wartime
1939-1945:
- from 1941 Two advisers (domestic and foreign broadcasts) imposed by Ministry of Information
- from 1942 Ex officio advice from Royal Society Secretaries (A.V. Hill, FRS and A.C. Egerton, FRS)
Post 1945:
- 1945 General Advisory Council reinstated (included Lawrence Bragg, FRS; Mark Oliphant, FRS)
- 1950 Sir Henry Dale, FRS is appointed BBC Science Adviser (2 year trial)
- experiment deemed a failure and not repeated
- 1964 Science Consultative Group established (disbanded in 1990s)
- 8 scientist members included Sir Lawrence Bragg, FRS and Herman Bondi, FRS
- met twice-yearly; reviewed recent science broadcasts and future plans
- Limited impact (Cf. Alan Jones (2010))
BBC Science Talks – Principal Speakers (1930-1952)
Name |
No. Broadcasts* |
Univ. Education |
Profession |
Andrade, E.N. Da C. (1887-1971) |
8 |
LON (physics) |
Physicist (Acad.) |
Baker, John R. (1900-1984) |
15 |
OX (science) |
Zoologist (Acad.) |
Bernal, J.D. (1901-1971) |
4 |
CAMB (physics) |
Physicist (Acad.) |
Bronowski, Jacob (1908-1974) |
8+ |
CAMB (maths) |
Scientific Civil Servant |
Dale, Henry (1875-1968) |
6 |
CAMB (physiol) |
Physiologist (Acad.) |
Haldane, J.B.S. (1892-1964) |
21 |
OX (biochem) |
Geneticist (Acad.) |
Haslett, A.W. (1906-1969) |
7 |
CAMB (science) |
Journalist/writer |
Heard, Gerald (1889-1971) |
100+ |
OX (history) |
Writer/broadcaster |
Hoyle, Fred (1915-2001) |
5+ |
CAMB (maths) |
Astronomer (Acad.) |
Huxley, Julian (1887-1975) |
50+ |
OX (zool) |
Writer |
Jeans, Sir James (1877-1946) |
23 |
CAMB (maths) |
Astronomer (Acad.) |
Levy, Hyman (1889-1975) |
6 |
EDBRGH (maths) |
Mathematician (Acad.) |
Lodge, Sir Oliver (1851-1940) |
5 |
GLAS (physics) |
Physicist (Acad.) |
Polanyi, Michael (1891-1976) |
5+ |
BERLIN (chem) |
Philosopher (Acad.) |
Ritchie, A.D. (1891-1967) |
12 |
CAMB biochem) |
Philosopher (Acad.) |
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970) |
11 |
CAMB (maths) |
Philosopher (Acad.) |
Russell, A.S. (n/a) |
6 |
GLAS(chem.) |
Chemist (Acad.) |
Thomson, Sir George P. (1892-1975) |
5 |
CAMB (physics) |
Physicist (Acad.) |
Waddington, C.H. (1905-1975) |
6 |
CAMB (geol) |
Geneticist (Acad.) |
Young, John Zachary (1907-1997) |
8 |
OX (zool) |
Biologist (Acad.) |
*Sources: Radio Times; The Times; The Listener; BBC Written Archives.
Key British Science Organisations
- Royal Society (RS)
- British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA)
- BA Division for Social Relations of Science (BA SRS)
- Association of Scientific Workers (AScW)
- Atomic Scientists’ Association (ASA)
- Society for Freedom in Science (SFS)
BBC Science Talks on Domestic Radio 1930-1945
Source: Desmarais (2004)
Notes:
- Percentage of BBC output as Talks averaged about 10% in the period 1930-1942 [Sources: Briggs (1995 vol.2), pp. 34–5; Cardiff (1983), p. 379; cited in Jones (2010)]
- Percentage of Talks devoted to science was highly variable ranging from ca. 15% in the early 1930s to ca. 5% during the early 1940s.
‘Service talks’ series were early 1930s’ popular science talks relating science to ‘industry and the home’, and distinct from narrowly educational or science-and-society talks. Mary Adams described them as talks designed ‘to provide the listener with a background of information and a sense of the all pervading character of information and officialdom’. Examples include ‘Modern Wonders of Science’ (1930); ‘This Surprising World’ (1931, 1932); and ‘Science in the Making’. Most were scripted and broadcast by the writer Gerald Heard.