‘The Northern chemist’—Truth behind the stereotype in the British scientific elite?

Abstract

In a prosopographical study of the British scientific elite, defined as Fellows of the Royal Society born since 1900, chemists were found to be distinctive in their social origins and schooling, being more likely than Fellows in other fields to come from relatively disadvantaged class backgrounds and to have attended state rather than private secondary schools. In thinking of possible explanations, we called to mind the student stereotype of ‘the Northern chemist’. Could this give some indications of how it should come about that those chemists who enter the scientific elite—a small minority—tend to differ from other elite members in the ways in question? Our more detailed analyses of the biographies of elite chemists, comparing those of different class origins, point to the following conclusions. The Northern chemist was a male stereotype, and chemists prove to be more predominantly male than other members of the scientific elite. Young people, mainly male, often growing up in industrial areas of the North of England (or in Wales) and in families whose male members were in manual work, were particularly likely to develop an interest in chemistry rather than in other sciences, and it was in chemistry that state education gave them their greatest comparative advantage over those privately educated. Generalising from these analyses, we suggest that a larger pool was created in chemistry than in other scientific fields of people who were of relatively disadvantaged social origins and state educated, and that this difference was then maintained through into the social composition of the small number of chemists who eventually gained elite status.