A Time to Remember

by Alexander Todd

  In January 1977, in pursuit of my wish to strengthen our overseas relations, I visited the Venezuelan and Brazilian Academies of Science, delivering the Isaac Newton Lecture to the former in Caracas. This was my first visit to South America and, although Venezuela and Brazil are very different from one another, both of them conveyed to me the same uneasy feeling that I have in India, where similar extremes of wealth and poverty exist side by side. But there was no mistaking the warmth of the welcome my wife and I received; I am sure that our visit was well worth while and not only helped materially to strengthen relations between the Royal Society and these South American Academies, but in a wider sphere between these two countries and the United Kingdom.

  During 1977 the recession was beginning to bite into research funding, and there was much unease among the general public and among politicians about the 'relevance' of university research and about whether it should be oriented directly to industrial needs; among academics, too, the combined effects of the post-Robbins expansion and financial stringency were widely discussed. My views on these matters formed the basis of my 1977 Anniversary Address and are reproduced in Appendix III, while in 1978 (see Appendix IV) I rejected the gloomy picture of the future painted in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth, and returned again to the problem of freedom of science and the need to beware of external control and direction. Discussion on the right of scientists to choose what research they should pursue had become a very live issue with the advent of recombinant DNA and the potential of genetic engineering. It was held by some that research in these areas should be forbidden because of its possible effects on society; this view I could not, and still cannot, accept.

  By 1979 the long-term effects of the sudden and prodigious expansion of higher education in the 1960s were becoming increasingly apparent and were being considerably increased by the financial cuts being imposed on universities in the United Kingdom by the University Grants Committee - cuts which were leading to a breakdown in the dual support system of university research which had in the past been one of the strong points of the British system of financing universities. These topics I dealt with at some length in 1979 (Appendix V). Although apparently unheeded at the time, it was gratifying to see that within a couple of years some movement in the directions I indicated in that Address occurred, and fortunately that movement is continuing. I am convinced that, especially in time of financial stringency, funds available for research should be concentrated on those centres and people doing first-class work and not dissipated over a large number of small units, many of them deficient in quality and contributing very little to progress. Such views are unpopular, but I believe they will in the end prevail; meanwhile, we are learning the hard way!

  During my period of office as President I made a number of overseas visits in addition to the South American visit already mentioned. Some of these I made as an individual, e.g. to the Symposium on Natural Products in Moscow and Tashkent in 1978, and to a similar one on the Organic Chemistry of Phosphorus in Burzenin, Poland, in 1979, but others were on official business, involving, in many cases, the completion and signing of formal agreements between the Society and corresponding bodies in the countries concerned. In this way I visited the Soviet Union, China, the Philippines, Egypt, Japan and Jugoslavia, and made several visits to the National Academy of Sciences in Washington - a body with which the Royal Society has always maintained very close relations. During the same period I also represented the Society at the Silver Jubilee of the Australian Academy of Science in 1979, and had the honour, in the same year, to receive the Lomonosov Medal of the Soviet Academy in Moscow.

  Two visits paid to Iran during my period of office are worthy of special mention in the light of subsequent events in that country. The Empress Farah - a woman not only beautiful and charming, but very intelligent to boot - was anxious to see science properly organised and developed in Iran, believing that its disorganised state, and the lack of esteem in which it was held, were largely responsible for the emigration (mainly to the United States) of scientists whose loss Iran could ill afford. Her plans included the setting up of an Academy which would bring together the best scientists in the country, and be a kind of nerve-centre for development. To avoid any suspicion of corruption or intrigue in setting up such an academy and electing its first members, she turned to the Presidents of the Royal Society (myself and my immediate predecessor, Sir Alan Hodgkin), the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. (Dr Philip Handler) and of the Japan Academy (Dr Kiyoo Wadati) and, in May 1976, we four were invited to visit Teheran and there, in concert with the Minister for Science and Education, we selected twenty individuals to be the founding members of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Science before returning to our respective countries. The Academy was then founded, and within a couple of years was so well established that Dr Handler and I were invited to attend its annual meeting in Teheran in October 1978. There we each delivered a Pahlavi Memorial Lecture (probably the first and last!) and were formally admitted as the only foreign members of the Academy by the Empress herself, who was its Patron. On my first visit, the only substantial city I visited outside the capital was Isfahan, but neither there nor in Teheran itself was there any sign of unrest; if there was unrest, it was sufficiently concealed to make it invisible to a visitor like myself, unfamiliar with the local language. On the second visit, things were quite different in Teheran; a considerable section of the work force seemed to be on strike, heavily armed troops were on duty, not just around the palace but also around public buildings and parks. There was almost daily trouble in the bazaar, and tanks and armoured troop carriers were a common sight on the main streets. Apart from inconvenience caused by the curfew, which was rigorously enforced, and by striking hotel staffs, the affairs of the Academy went quite smoothly as did our visit to the palace and to various receptions. I recall one of these latter given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and attended by most of the diplomatic corps, at which I had a talk with a group of ambassadors about the situation in Teheran. They agreed that things were a bit difficult, but they gave it as their view that the army would deal with them and that everything would be back to normal in a week or two! Actually what happened in a week or two was full-scale revolution and expulsion of the Shah! On the day I left Teheran the roads leading out of the city were choked with traffic, and chaos reigned at the airport. I confess I was greatly relieved when I finally got on an aircraft and took off for Europe.

  I do not know the present position of the Academy, having had no communication from it for some time. I do know that it survived the revolution for I had some correspondence with its administrative secretary, and indeed had a visit from its Honorary Secretary in, I think, 1980. I understood from him that although the word Imperial had been removed from its title the Academy had been allowed to carry on, and that I was still a member. How many Iranian members there are now I do not know; certainly quite a number of the twenty chosen originally by us went into exile. But they may well have been replaced by others.

  I have already mentioned how, in 1973, I took over the chairmanship of the Nuffield Foundation. My predecessor resigned largely on the grounds of infirmity due to increasing age and, when I took over, I resolved that I should resign the chairmanship long before I was forced to do so by age and infirmity. Accordingly, when, in the autumn of 1979, I was approaching the age of seventy-two I decided to resign. This appeared to cause some alarm among my fellow Trustees, but I insisted, and formally announced my retirement as from 31 December 1979 (although I continued as a consultant and as an Ordinary Trustee of the Foundation). Much to the amusement of my family, this effort to divest myself of responsibility was not very successful, for, even before my formal date of retirement, I found myself involved in the creation and organisation of a charitable trust in Hong Kong of a similar size and with somewhat similar objects. It happened this way.

  In the spring of 1970 my younger daughter, Hilary, who had set out to travel overland to the Far East with
a view to taking a stage management job in connection with Expo 70 in Tokyo, ended up in Hong Kong where she took a job with a television company and remained there for about three years. Prior to this my wife and I had visited Hong Kong on several occasions, and we had good friends there in Sir Lindsay and Lady Ride. Sir Lindsay, a well-known figure in the Colony, had been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong until his retirement in 1965. We also knew among others the professor of chemistry, Douglas Payne, who had worked in my department in Cambridge and who, with his wife Grace, was extremely kind and helpful to my daughter when she arrived in Hong Kong. Naturally, having a daughter there caused us to increase the number of our visits to Hong Kong, and we became frequent visitors from 1970 onwards, and continued to be such even after Hilary left and returned to England. Our growing association with Hong Kong depended not only on the Rides and numerous other friends we acquired there, but also, and perhaps more importantly, on my involvement with the recently created Chinese University of Hong Kong located near Shatin in the New Territories. This university, which occupies a magnificent site overlooking the sea, was formed as a bilingual university by an amalgamation of three colleges -Chung Chi College, United College and New Asia College -under the dynamic leadership of its first Vice-Chancellor (and effective creator) Dr C. M. Li, whom I came to know well. When I first saw the campus, the only college actually on it was Chung Chi, but now the whole university is located there and it is still growing. The Chinese University interested me greatly; as a bilingual institution which, unlike the older University of Hong Kong, could take entrants from the Chinese middle schools in Hong Kong, and operating four-year courses on a pattern closer to that used in the People's Republic of China, it appeared to have great potential for the future. With the passage of time the Republic and Hong Kong were bound to get closer and it seemed to me that the Chinese University could have a major role to play as a kind of bridge between the Chinese universities and those of the western world. Because of my belief in its potential, my contacts with it increased, and in 1978 I accepted an invitation to become a member of the University Council, a position which I still hold. In that capacity I have come to know and to enjoy the friendship of Dr Ma Lin who succeeded Dr Li as Vice-Chancellor, and who shares my view of the university's potential.

  In 1978 I had a letter from Lady Ride (now, alas, widowed) telling me that she had an old friend, Mr Noel Croucher, who was in a very worried state and wanted my help. Noel Croucher had lived in Hong Kong since he arrived there as a very young man in 1910. A stockbroker, he amassed over the years a very large fortune; separated from his family, he lived alone in a large house part way up the Peak and, at the time of which I write, he had become something of a recluse. His fame in financial circles was legendary (I remember reading an article in The Financial Times in which he was described as the eminence grise of Hong Kong finance). Noel loathed publicity of any sort, and, although he had from time to time made substantial donations to schools and hospitals in Hong Kong, he took great pains to conceal as far as humanly possible the fact that he had done so. At the time Lady Ride wrote to me, he had been wondering how best to use for charitable purposes a substantial sum of money which he had, and did not wish to see unused. He had discussed the matter with some of his financial associates who had made various suggestions about setting up trusts, but he didn't really like any of the schemes proposed. Moreover, he got an idea (probably quite erroneous) into his head that those to whom he had talked were really out to get hold of his money. When an old gentleman of eighty-eight gets ideas like that into his head they are very hard to remove; so it was that he talked about his troubles to Lady Ride, and decided he wished to discuss everything with me as someone he could trust. Within a very short time from my receipt of Lady Ride's original letter I had a long screed from Noel about his problems, and asking me to come and see him about them. Now, it is true that I had met Noel Croucher once or twice fleetingly at functions in Hong Kong, but until this time I really did not know him well and I was faintly alarmed when, in one of his letters, he added a P.S. to the effect that he didn't quite know how much money he wished to dispose of but the last time he had looked at it the sum was around £15 million (it transpired in the end to be much more than that). I was somewhat more alarmed when, after our first meeting, he seemed to have decided that I was the man for him and henceforth seemed unwilling to do anything about his proposed charitable activity unless I approved of it. He told me that his first priority would be to see that outstanding young Hong Kong Chinese graduates in science, technology, or medicine should be enabled to develop their talents further by postgraduate work in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. That done, he would like to promote activities which would benefit Hong Kong and raise the standard of its higher educational institutions. For the rest, he was prepared to help promote cooperation with China but did not wish to be active in Singapore, Taiwan, or other strongholds of overseas Chinese where he felt there was already plenty of money if they would only use it properly. He did not want to have his money spent on bricks and mortar and he had no time for sociology and very little for social science in general! Noel agreed that a Trust or Foundation should be set up and after some persuasion he agreed to be its first chairman, but only if I would be his vice-chairman and would undertake as such to get it going and to succeed him if anything should happen to him. He was readily agreeable to his lawyer, Ian MacCallum, also being a Trustee, and we persuaded him to add Dr Rayson Huang, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong and Sir John Butterfield, Master of Downing College and Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge. Sir John was not merely eminent in British medicine but had, through the Hong Kong University and Polytechnic Grants Committee, substantial knowledge of medicine and science in Hong Kong institutions. In due course a Trust Deed setting up the Noel Croucher Foundation was drawn up and signed by Noel and his four Trustees in November 1979. A further Trustee in the person of Mr Michael Sandberg, chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, was appointed in 1980.

  The reason for my family's amusement at this time is now obvious. In fact I had resigned the relatively simple task of being chairman of a well-established Foundation with an efficient administration only to find myself virtually in charge of a Foundation of not dissimilar size with no organisation whatever. To complete the story, I have to record that Noel, to our great regret, died suddenly following a massive heart attack in February 1980, leaving me with the task of getting the Foundation off the ground; the Foundation's size, and responsibilities were not diminished by the fact that, under the terms of Noel's will, it became residuary legatee of his estate. The history of the beginnings and the development of the Croucher Foundation will in due course be recorded; suffice to say now, that it has been in operation since Noel's death and has made a number of grants to the universities in Hong Kong and awarded a substantial number of scholarships and fellowships for research. I confess that, although it may have been tedious work from time to time, I have enjoyed my part in the Foundation's development and I believe we are operating in accordance with our Founder's wishes. Needless to say, being in charge of a charitable foundation with its seat in Hong Kong, I am now an even more frequent visitor to the colony!

  As I approached the end of my five-year tenure of office as President of the Royal Society on 1 December 1980 I gave quite a lot of thought to the content of my final Anniversary Address. I decided to make it a vehicle for the expression of my views on the Society as it was when I became President and on the matters which, apart from my chemistry, had occupied me over many years, namely the relations between science and government in general, and the position in these matters which the Royal Society should occupy; I believe the best way to summarise here my views on these matters is to refer the reader to Appendix VI, in which I reproduce the relevant portion of my final Anniversary Address.

  I thoroughly enjoyed my Presidency of the Royal Society, and it is my hope that
I may have made some positive contribution in that position. It certainly provided me with an opportunity to influence, in some degree, action on many issues in public affairs in which I had been interested and involved over a period of some thirty years. The period between 1975 and 1980, however, is too close for me to give any considered judgement. When I look back further over my entire career, of which only a selective account has been given in these memoirs, it seems to me that I have been consistently fortunate in my family, my scientific work, and in my other interests. Chance, rather than design, has exercised a major influence -but that, I suppose, must be true for most of us.

  APPENDIX I 'A Time to Think'

  Presidential Address delivered to the Durham Meeting of the British Association on 2 September 1970. (Advancement of Science 1970, 27, 70)