Some recent developments at the National Physical Laboratory

Abstract

When the National Physical Laboratory was founded in 1900, the Royal Society was ‘invited to control the proposed institution and to nominate a governing body’. Since the Royal Society had agitated strongly for the creation of such a laboratory, this invitation was accepted, and although the National Physical Laboratory was incorporated into the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research when that body was created in 1917, the connexion between the Royal Society and the National Physical Laboratory is still very close on all matters of scientific policy.