The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA).Robert Winston, New Scientist, 3 February 2009. The current Chief Executive is Hannah Russell. The BSA's mission is to get more people engaged in the field of science by coordinating, delivering, and overseeing different projects that are suited to achieve these goals. The BSA "envisions a society in which a diverse group of people can learn and apply the sciences in which they learn." and is managed by a professional staff located at their Head Office in the Wellcome Wolfson Building. The BSA offers a wide variety of activities and events that both recognise and encourage people to be involved in science. These include the British Science Festival, British Science Week, the CREST Awards, For Thought, The Ideas Fund, along with regional and local events.
History
Foundation
The Association was founded in 1831 and modelled on the German Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte.The German organisation was founded in 1822. It was founded during post-war reconstruction after the Peninsula war to improve the advancement of science in England. The prime mover (who is regarded as the main founder) was Reverend William Vernon Harcourt, following a suggestion by Sir David Brewster, who was disillusioned with the elitist and conservative attitude of the Royal Society. Charles Babbage, William Whewell and J. F. W. JohnstonDavid Knight, 'Johnston, James Finlay Weir (1796–1855)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. are also considered to be founding members. The first meeting was held in York (at the Yorkshire Museum) on Tuesday 27 September 1831 with various scientific papers being presented on the following days. It was chaired by Viscount Milton, president of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and "upwards of 300 gentlemen" attended the meeting.Caledonian Mercury, 6 October 1831. The Preston Mercury recorded that those gathered consisted of "persons of distinction from various parts of the kingdom, together with several of the gentry of Yorkshire and the members of philosopher societies in this country". The newspaper published the names of over a hundred of those attending and these included, amongst others, eighteen clergymen, eleven doctors, four knights, two Viscounts and one Lord.Preston Chronicle, 8 October 1831.
From that date onwards a meeting was held annually at a place chosen at a previous meeting. In 1832, for example, the meeting was held in Oxford, chaired by Reverend Dr William Buckland. By this stage the Association had four sections: Physics (including Mathematics and Mechanical Arts), Chemistry (including Mineralogy and Chemical Arts), Geology (including Geography) and Natural History.Jackson's Oxford Journal, 23 June 1832.
During this second meeting, the first objects and rules of the Association were published. Objects included systematically directing the acquisition of scientific knowledge, spreading this knowledge as well as discussion between scientists across the world, and to focus on furthering science by removing obstacles to progress. The rules established included what constituted a member of the Association, the fee to remain a member, and the process for future meetings. They also include dividing the members into different committees. These committees separated members into their preferred subject matter, and were to recommend investigations into areas of interest, then report on these findings, as well as progress in their science at the annual meetings.
Additional sections were added throughout the years by either splitting off part of an original section, like making Geography and Ethnology its own section apart from Geology in 1851, or by defining a new subject area of discussion, such as Anthropology in 1869.
A very important decision in the Association's history was made in 1842 when it was resolved to create a "physical observatory". A building that became well known as the Kew Observatory was taken on for the purpose and Francis Ronalds was chosen as the inaugural Honorary Director. Kew Observatory quickly became one of the most renowned meteorological and geomagnetic observatories in the world. The Association relinquished control of the Kew Observatory in 1871 to the management of the Royal Society, after a large donation to grant the observatory its independence.
In 1872, the Association purchased its first central office in London, acquiring four rooms at 22 Albemarle Street. This office was intended to be a resource for members of the Association.
One of the most famous events linked to the Association Meeting was an exchange between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860 (see the 1860 Oxford evolution debate). Although it is often described as a "debate", the exchange occurred after the presentation of a paper by Prof Draper of New York, on the intellectual development of Europe with relation to Darwin's theory (one of a number of scientific papers presented during the week) and the subsequent discussion involved a number of other participants (although Wilberforce and Huxley were the most prominent).Oxford Chronicle, 7 July 1860. Although a number of newspapers made passing references to the exchange,Liverpool Mercury, 5 July 1860. it was not until later that it was accorded greater significance in the evolution debate.Jackson's Oxford Journal, 4 August 1894.
Electrical standards One of the most important contributions of the British Association was the establishment of standards for electrical usage: the ohm as the unit of electrical resistance, the volt as the unit of electrical potential, and the ampere as the unit of electrical current."The Ohm is where the Art is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards" Bruce J. Hunt (1994) , Osiris 9: 48 to 63 A need for standards arose with the submarine telegraph industry. Practitioners came to use their own standards established by wire coils: "By the late 1850s, Clark, Varley, Bright, Smith and other leading British cable engineers were using calibrated resistance coils on a regular basis and were beginning to use calibrated condensers as well."
The undertaking was suggested to the BA by William Thomson, and its success was due to the use of Thomson's mirror galvanometer. Josiah Latimer Clark and Fleeming Jenkin made preparations. Thomson, with his students, found that impure copper, contaminated with arsenic, introduced significant extra resistance. The chemist Augustus Matthiessen contributed an appendix (A) to the final 1873 reportFleeming Jenkin (1873) Reports of the Committee on Electrical Standards appointed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science , link from HathiTrust. that showed temperature-dependence of alloys. The natural relation between these units are clearly, that a unit of electromotive force between two points of a conductor separated by a unit of resistance shall produce unit current, and that this current in a unit of time convey a unit quantity of electricity. The unit system was "absolute" since it agreed with previously accepted units of work, or energy: The unit current of electricity, in passing through a conductor of unit resistance, does a unit of work or its equivalent in a unit of time.
Committee on Mechanical Nomenclature In 1888, at a meeting of the British Association in Bath, the Committee on Mechanical Nomenclature suggested three new units: the kine for velocity, equal to 1 centimeter per second; the bole for momentum, equal to 1 gram times 1 kine; and the barad for pressure, equal to 1 dyne per square centimeter. The London Electrical Review called the new units "an abomination, and wholly unnecessary" and attributed their creation to a "craze" for naming new units. William Henry Preece noted in 1891 that he had only seen one instance of use of the new units. By 1913, the units had fallen entirely out of use.
Other The Association was parodied by English novelist Charles Dickens as 'The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything' in The Mudfog Papers (1837–38).
In 1878 a committee of the Association recommended against constructing Charles Babbage's analytical engine, due to concerns about the current state of the machine's lack of complete working drawings, the machine's potential cost to produce, the machine's durability during repeated use, how and what the machine will actually be utilized for, and that more work would need to be done to bring the design up to a standard at which it is guaranteed to work.
The Association introduced the British Association (usually termed "BA") screw threads, a series of screw thread standards in sizes from 0.25 mm up to 6 mm, in 1882. The standards were based on the metric system, although they had to be re-defined in imperial terms for use by UK industry. The standard was modified in 1884 to restrict significant figures for the metric counterpart of diameter and pitch of the screw in the published table, as well as not designating screws by their number of threads per inch, and instead giving an approximation due to considerable actual differences in manufactured screws.
In 1889, a member of the Rational Dress Society, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, stunned the proceedings of a meeting of the Association in Newcastle upon Tyne by organizing an impromptu session where she introduced rational dress to a wide audience, her speech being noted in newspapers across Britain.
In 1903, microscopist and astronomer Washington Teasdale died whilst attending the annual meeting.
Perception of science in the UK The Association's main aim is to make science more relevant, representative and connected to society.
At the beginning of the Great Depression, the Association's focus began to shift their purpose to account for not only scientific progress, but the social aspects of such progress. In the Association's 1931 meeting, the president General Jan Christiaan Smuts ended his address by the proposal of linking science and ethics together but provided no means to actuate his ideas. In the following years, debate began as to whom the responsibilities of scientists fell upon. The Association adopted a resolution in 1934 that dedicated efforts to better balance scientific advancement with social progress.
J.D. Bernal, a member of the Royal Society and the British Association, wrote The Social Function of Science in 1939, describing a need to correctly utilize science for society and the importance of its public perception. The idea of the public perception of science was furthered in 1985 when the Royal Society published a report titled The Public Understanding of Science.
In the report, a committee of the Royal Society determined that it was scientists' duty to communicate to and educate the public. Lord George Porter, then president of the Royal Society, British Association, and director of the Royal Institution, created the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, or COPUS, to promote public understanding of science.