Effects of World War II on the development of knowledge in the biological sciences

Abstract

This lecture is not based on any thorough survey of literature about the war or its effects, but rather on personal impressions both by myself and by the many biologists who have been good enough to write to me. Although the published version has been supplemented by information given to me after the discussion, the account is inevitably incomplete and apologies are due to people whose work is inadvertantly omitted from the account. The symposium as a whole is supposed to survey the effects of two world wars. I have little information about the effect of the first world war, but I do know that biology suffered considerably from the loss of some of its most promising young men. Physiology might have advanced more quickly with Keith Lucas; developmental biology would have been different with the help of John Wilfred Jenkinson. I mention only these two, because I myself have seen the effects of their loss at Cambridge and Oxford respectively, but there must have been many others. My impression is that for biology the first world war was almost wholly detrimental and that the indiscrimate slaughter damaged this science no less than it did the development of many other branches of knowledge. I know that a lot more public money was channelled into science after the first world war, but that in no way compensated for the loss of genius.