IN the early summer of 1933, the Academic Assistance Council was founded, under the presidency of Lord Rutherford and with the active support of many distinguished men of science and other scholars, to find places in the fabric of world science and world scholarship for men and women driven from their countries and their work for racial, religious or political reasons. Such persecution was not new, even in the very recent past: it had happened again and again in Russia and was still happening: but the scale of its application in Germany and the distinction of its victims demanded immediate help. The Academic Assistance Council had no partisan, political or national bias. Indiscriminate relief was to be no part of its work. Its purpose was to act as a link between the scientific workers and other scholars displaced and the universities and research institutions of the world, so that their exceptional abilities exceptionally trained—to quote the noble declaration of the Council's founders—should not be lost.