Abstract
LORD BALFOUR was twice Lord President of the Council, first from October 1919 until the fall of the Coalition Government in October 1922, and again in 1925 on the death of Lord Curzon until the end of that Parliament in the spring of 1929. The Lord Presidency used to be considered a general utility office. He converted it into a Ministry of Research. The idea was not born in his fertile brain for a Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and a similar Committee for Medical Research had been established during the War, and Lord Haldane's Committee on the Machinery of Government had recommended the creation of such a Ministry. But Lord Balfour it was who turned an experiment which many thought destined to disappear with other War-time devices into a reality which is now generally recognised as a permanent and essential part of modern government. His unparalleled prestige in the political and intellectual worlds, his liberation from the rough-and-tumble of party politics, were favourable circumstances, but his abiding faith in the power of science to promote the happiness and well-being of man, his enthusiastic interest in the advance of knowledge, his sympathy with the scientific outlook and with young people, and his long experience of the way in which things have to be done in Great Britain, were the decisive factors.
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From Sir FRANK HEATH, G.B.E., K.C.B., formerly Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Nature 125, 501–502 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125501a0