INSTALLATION OF THE PRESIDENT 
January 6, 1933. 
On Friday, January 6, 1933, at Birkbeck College, London, on the 
occasion of the joint meeting of Organising Sectional Committees, 
Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Pres. R.S., was installed in the 
Presidency of the Association in succession to Sir Alfred Ewing, K.C.B., 
F.R.S. 
Sir Alfred Ewing said that under the new statute of the Association, 
which came into effect a year ago, the President came into office in 
January and held it throughout the year. It was an excellent rule, for 
it educated the President in the work of the Association and its various 
committees before his chief duty fell to be performed at the Annual 
Meeting in theautumn. There was no need for him to say how fortunate 
the Association was in securing Sir Frederick Hopkins as President—a 
man already so pre-eminent as to be President of the Royal Society. 
Last year it had been, so to speak, the turn of that part of science which 
dealt with the constitution. of non-living matter and with purely 
mechanical processes, which can certainly kill, but cannot make alive. 
Now they turned, perhaps with relief and greater hope, to the still more 
difficult science of life—of whose fascinating problems no one could 
speak with more authority and clearer discernment than Sir Frederick 
Hopkins. One felt certain that in his hands the Association would lose 
nothing of the public attention and interest its great annual conference 
continued to command. More than ever, he believed, the public wished 
to know about the advances of science—partly because these were now 
confessedly tentative and incomplete, and partly also because they might 
provide some guidance in the urgent perplexities of our social affairs. 
It seemed not unlikely, and probably it was desirable, that in future 
meetings of the Association scientists would make a more conscious 
effort to relate their studies to social problems. Science was now playing 
so large a part in human life, both for good and for evil, that they could 
not logically stand aloof: they were bound to recognise the immense 
consequence of discovery and invention, not only on man’s philosophy 
but on his habits of living and his relations to his fellows. Science 
had brought new powers, and with them new dangers—grave dangers 
of which the community were scarcely yet aware. It was clearly the duty 
of science to point these out. The first step towards escape from these 
dangers was to have them fully realised. 
