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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. 
Scientific Research in the United 
Kingdom. 
By SIR FRANK HEATH, K.C.B.* 
(No. I.) 
HE story that I have to tell is the tale of a great adventure—one of 
the adventures of the great war. It was not undertaken as part 
of the campaign for victory in the field, but in order to help us to 
win the peace, a campaign now beginning and likely to be scarcely 
less difficult, though not as catastrophic, as the trials from which 
we have emerged. It was an adventure upon which the Government 
embarked in the summer of 1915, because, like all true adventures, 
it was an act of faith. The general direction of advance had been thought out, 
but the road was still to make, and the result was as yet invisible. The 
problem the Government set itself was the encouragement and organization of 
scientific research by direct State action. An experiment such as no country 
had ever attempted was undertaken by a people which, in some respects, is the 
most conservative in the world. We are not a nation with a finished theory 
of the functions and powers of government, and in that we are fortunate, for 
when the pressure of need arises, we are willing to take courses which a more 
philosophical race would shun. Our enemies, whose political theory was worked 
out to the last details, in confident contempt for the human nature with which 
it juggled, never dreamt of attempting the organization of research by direct 
action of the State. They were more systematic, and, to do them justice, more 
zealous in their pursuit of science than any other nation. They could rely 
upon the effects of their highly organized State-regulated system of education. 
But had they found themselves in our shoes, they would have discovered many 
excellent arguments to show the futility of attempting to organize research by 
State action. It would, indeed, have been an impossibility for the State as the 
Germans conceived it. Humboldt, in his famous unfinished memorandum to 
the Berlin Academy of Sciences, remarks: “The State must never forget that 
the achievement is not the State’s, nor ever can be; it must remember that 
whenever the State seeks to interfere, its action is always a hindrance; it must 
be content to realize that the work will proceed far better without it.” 
Humboldt was thinking of pure research—research, that is, in Pure Science 
and in learning of all kinds. It is clear, from his remarks, that what we may 
call research in Applied Science for the purposes of industry and the practical 
convenience or wellsbeing of life, was not in his mind. But it is worth while, 
before I go on to explain what has been done by the Government in this country 
during the last few years, to say something in explanation both of what is 
meant by “research ” throughout this paper, and something about the research 
worker and his manner of work. 
Research is a term which has been very much on our lips recently, and, as 
is usual in cases of this kind, it is by no means always used in one sense. The 
-atent Office speak of a research into the terms of previous patents, by which 
they mean making a search for already known and recorded facts; and the word 
is similarly used in many cases where the sole activity is the seeking out, 
the collection and collation of existing knowledge with a view to some definite 
course of action. Strictly speaking, this kind of work would be more properly 
described as “search” than a “research.” At any rate, it is not the sort of 
work with which I am concerned. Before research in its strict sense can be 
begun, it may be necessary to make a search for facts already known and 
recorded, but forgotten or overlooked. Such action is of the same preliminary 
kind as seeking for paper and ink and pens before beginning to write; but it. 
is no more research in the strict .scientific sense than the collection of pens, 
ink, and paper is authorship. In the meaning of the term as I am using it 
here, research means the creation of new knowledge. It is an actual extension 
* Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, London. 
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