Research Establishments

In the general debate a century ago on the relations between science and the state there had been a division of opinion about the part that Government establishments should play in scientific research. The view advanced by Alexander Strange, and supported by the Devonshire Commission was that ‘There should be established a system of national institutions for the sole purpose of advancing science by practical research, quite apart from teaching it’. Lyon Playfair, although equally concerned with Strange in the public fortunes of science, saw that a possible drawback resulting from state laboratories was the impoverishment of university life, since most of the research would then be done in Government laboratories - and teaching would thus be divorced from it. He pointed out that ‘Germany unites the function of teaching and research in the universities, while France keeps them in separate institutions’. This latter thought may have been in the mind of Dr Phelps, the Master of Sydney Sussex, when he opposed the foundation of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with the argument ‘A Prussian is a Prussian and an Englishman an Englishman, and God forbid it should be otherwise’