Planning Scientific Research in Great Britain

Abstract

To the January number of the Nineteenth Century and After, Prof. J. D. Bernal contributes an article entitled “A Policy for Scientific Research for Britain”. The article is based on a memorandum on the same subject which was drawn up for the Parliamentary Science Committee by a joint committee of the British Science Guild and the Association of Scientific Workers. This memorandum was the subject of the leading article on research and finance published in NATUBE of July 11, 1936. Some modifications have been made in the original memorandum, as the result of criticisms or suggestions by various individuals and scientific associations. Prof. Bernal makes an estimate of what he calls “the present budget of science in England”. He arrives at a mean figure of £4,500,000, which represents only one tenth of one per cent of the national income—contrasting very unfavourably with the millions spent on advertising. In the United States the annual expenditure on scientific research is approximately £40,000,000, representing three tenths per cent of the national income or relatively three times as much as the British expenditure. Prof. Bernal puts the expenditure in the Soviet Union as only just under one per cent, and says that in Germany and in Japan it is probable that the proportional sum spent is between three and five times that of Great Britain.