MARCH 4, 1965
Research in the United Kingdom
AN ADDRESS BY Lord Rothschild, G.M., SC.D., F.R.S.,
CHAIRMAN OF SHELL RESEARCH
CHAIRMAN, The President, Lt. Col. Robert H. Hilborn
http://www.empireclubfoundation.com/details.asp?SpeechID=1661&FT=yes
Our guest of honour and speaker today is the worthy descendant of a family of upright men, devoted to duty, using their talents and their means for the benefit of their fellow human beings.
Baron Nathaniel Rothschild, 3rd Lord Rothschild is the first of his title to forsake finance altogether. His career is one of such accomplishment and variety, one hardly knows where to begin. Louis Pasteur said: 'In the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind."
Lord Rothschild was educated at Harvard and Trinity Cambridge where he was a Fellow from 1935 to 1939, and an Honorary Fellow since 1961. His degrees include doctorates in Philosophy and Science.
During World War II he was one of Britain's most successful and audacious bomb removal experts. The award of the George Medal is eloquent testimony to his bravery and skill.
I am told that he was also a "Boffin." For those of you who know Boffin only as "Noddy" or the "Golden Dustman" from Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend" let me hasten to explain that in Britain during the war a "Boffin" was, and I quote, "A bird bursting with weird and sometimes inopportune ideas, but possessed of staggering inventiveness, analytical powers, and persistence. Its ideas, like its eggs, were conical and unbreakable. When you pushed the unwanted ones away they just rolled back." Sir Robert Watson-Watt has stated that the bill of the boffin had two separate functions. One was to probe into other person's business and the other was to puncture the more highly coloured and ornate eggs of the "Lesser Back Room Birds" which were quite inappropriate to the military scene.
Seriously, the boffin was a particular type of scientist who could understand the viewpoint of the services, who worked with them, and who frequently shared their dangers. For his part, Lord Rothschild, in addition to the George Medal, was mentioned in despatches and awarded both the American Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star.
A Labour peer, a jazz pianist of professional standard, he is one of Britain's most eminent scientists. He served as Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council for 10 years, was a director of B.O.A.C. for two years and a member of the B.B.C. Advisory Council for four.
VERA-ALLEN Second Husband Victor Rothschild
http://www.gorilla.net/~mikeday/veraellen/VE-Family-and-Friends-2.html
From his publications which include "Fertilization," "A Classification of Living Animals" etc., one realizes that as a biologist he has gathered pioneer insights into what Morton in his book on "The Rothschilds" refers to as "the sex life of bedbugs, the love technique of the spider and procreation among leeches," but that he is above all an eminent biochemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Jacques Barzun, Provost of Columbia and a staunch defender of "The House of Intellect" speaks of research being-"at once compulsory and honorific. Compulsory - because research finds out what man's bewildered eye or crusty experience cannot discern by inspection, and honorific because it requires someone to break the lock step of routine, stand off, look, and ask questions."
We have such a someone with us today, and it is my high honour to present and our great privilege to receive the Chairman of Shell Research, The Honourable Lord Rothschild, who will address us on "Research in the United Kingdom."
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A Researcher ....indeed!
- Aladdin
