Anniversary Dinner 1965

Abstract

Speech by Mr Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, at the Anniversary Dinner, The Dorchester, 30 November 1965 It is my privilege tonight to propose the toast of the most distinguished scientific institution in the world and to combine it with the name of its new President and a very old friend of mine, Professor Patrick Blackett. No words of mine or of any other guest speaker could hope to do more than gild the already deep gold of the Society’s achievements. By five years I have missed your tercentenary celebrations when perhaps it would have been appropriate to deal with the history of the Society. Tonight it is more appropriate to speak of the present. Though even so I might perhaps be forgiven for remarking that this year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize to Sir Lawrence Bragg and to his father jointly. Since that time this country has honoured eleven Nobel Prize winners in physics, including Mr President, yourself seventeen years ago. It has honoured thirteen Nobel Prizes in chemistry, the latest last year and also over that same period too, fourteen in medicine, including the retiring President, Lord Florey, twenty years ago.