4 president's address. 



of subject and membership. In the words of Sir David Brewster, who 

 gave the first impulse to its formation, it was to be ' an Association of 

 our nobility, clergy, gentry, and philosophers. ' 



The meetings were intended to promote personal intercourse, to 

 organise research, to advocate reform of the laws hindering research, 

 and to improve the status of scientific men. The right of membership 

 was confined to those who already belonged to some learned society, 

 and William Whewell, one of the principal supporters of the movement, 

 even suggested that only authors of memoirs published by a learned 

 society should be admitted.^ He emphasized this proposal by the 

 recommendation ^ ' in some way to avoid the crowd of lay members 

 whose names stand on the List of the Eoyal Society.' The reform 

 of the Patent Laws and the introduction of an International Copyright 

 were suggested as subjects suitable for discussion, not apparently from 

 the point of view of general advantage, but merely in the interests of 

 one section of the community. 



Whatever the objects of the founders of the Association may have 

 been, it is obvious that questions of public importance could not be 

 permanently excluded from meetings the success of which depended on 

 the interest stimulated in the community. The Statistical Section, which 

 owed its origin to the visit, at the first Oxford Meeting (1832), of 

 Quetelet, the Belgian astronomer and economist, was the first to assert 

 itself by engaging in a discussion of the Poor Laws. Whewell deeply 

 resented this violation of academic neutrality : ' it was impossible, ' he 

 wrote, ' to listen to the Proceedings of the Statistical Section on Friday 

 vrithout perceiving that they involved exactly what it was most necessary 

 and most desired to exclude from our Proceedings, ' ' and again : ' Who 

 would propose (I put it to Chalmers, and he allowed the proposal to be 

 intolerable) an ambulatorj- body, composed partly of men of reputation 

 and partly of a miscellaneous crowd, to go round year by year from town 

 to town and at each place to discuss the most inflammatory and agitating 

 questions of the day ? ' * 



Fortunately for our Association, this narrow-minded attitude dia not 

 prevail, and our records show that while not avoiding controversial and 

 even inflammatory subjects, we have been able to exercise a powerful in- 

 fluence on the progress of science. The establishment of electric units, 

 universally accepted throughout the world, originated in the work of one 

 of our committees ; the effort which led to the foundation of the 

 National Physical Laboratory, one of the most efficient and beneficial 



' Others were allowed to join on recommendation by the General Committee. 

 It was only in 1906 that this restriction, which had become obsolete, was removed. 



2 Whewdl's Writings and Letters, vol. ii. p. 128. 



" Loc. C4<.,p. 289. 



* It is much to be desired that the documents relating to the early history of the 

 British Association should be published in a collected form. 



