Abstract
This paper examines the early schooling, in London and in Cambridge, of the later Nobel laureate and President of the Royal Society, the physiologist Sir Henry Dale (1875-1968). The influence of key teachers who directed the boy's interest towards science, and the impact of his schooling on his university education and later scientific career, are examined in particular. The significance of the zoologist Edward Butler of Tollington Park College, who taught Dale in his early teenage years, is highlighted.
Highlights
In a lecture inaugurating the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Newcastle in 1967, Sir Hans Krebs FRS, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1953, argued that ‘scientists are not so much born as made by those who teach them.’[1]
This paper examines the early schooling, in London and in Cambridge, of the later Nobel laureate and President of the Royal Society, the physiologist Sir Henry Dale (1875 – 1968)
His examples all referred to undergraduate or graduate teaching, and his main contention was that all scientists of distinction had been fortunate enough at some critical stage in their training to have come under the influence of an outstanding teacher
Summary
In a lecture inaugurating the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Newcastle in 1967, Sir Hans Krebs FRS, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1953, argued that ‘scientists are not so much born as made by those who teach them.’[1] His examples all referred to undergraduate or graduate teaching, and his main contention was that all scientists of distinction (and ‘despite some personal embarrassment’ he used the Nobel prize as an indicator of such distinction) had been fortunate enough at some critical stage in their training to have come under the influence of an outstanding teacher. The use and interpretation of such material can be problematic for later historians, especially when no corroborative sources exist.[13]
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