Vice Chancellor, Professor Baldwin, ladies and gentlemen.
Of course its a great pleasure for me to return to Oxford although I've seen many many new buildings since I last worked in South Parks Road and in the area which is allocated to science. But I come first to pay tribute to the supreme importance of universities as such in the life of the nation.
We have quite a number, few as ancient or as wide in their faculties as this one. But you play a supreme part in the future of our country and of the wider world; a supreme part first in training the minds of young people, in transmitting the message of knowledge and, I think, something which only universities and those engaged in research can do—providing and creating the new ideas which can unlock old problems, not only scientific problems but others as well and that is an absolutely vital part of the work of the universities. Of course today we are in the science faculty but it applies not only to science but as all of those who have worked in science understand.
For example, in the next parliamentary year we shall have to start to legislate on the Warnock Report on what happens to human embryos and whether you are allowed to do research upon them. That will involve not only work on science; it involves very great moral questions and with all sorts of people cutting right across party lines who hold very different views. I mention this to make it clear that science isn't a thing apart from life, it is very much a part of life and each of us are concerned with the wider aspects, as well as the results of the scientific research and industry itself. [end p1]
And so my first reason for coming, is to pay immense tribute to the work of universities in the life of the nation and of course particularly to my own university of Oxford. And the second reason is to return once again to visit the science faculty in Oxford. It is, as we know, an extremely good one and has provided so much fundamental research and has done so much work in the life of the nation. It is suggested that we, these days, work in our specialisms and that the specialisms have become much more special, much narrower than they used to be. I think that they may have become so as knowledge has advanced and we tend to concentrate on working in smaller and smaller specialities. I was very pleased to hear the Vice Chancellor say that he thought we'd always worked in some respects in an interdisciplinary way otherwise we could hardly have made some of the great discoveries of indeed in my time up here … on penicillin unless people from different faculties of science had automatically come together to contribute their knowledge to the particular problem.
But when we are discussing how to allocate the money to sciences, and believe you me that is a very very difficult problem, even for scientists, because we have masses of scientific commitments, it was suggested that we set up a new organisation known as interdisciplinary research centres. Now I must tell you that I have a natural scepticism when anyone suggests that we set up a new organisation to deal with something, because I really would prefer to put the money directly to the work and not have the energy going on to the new organisation.
In making their decisions on how funding for this scientific activity, particularly on basic research, should be allocated they came up with the idea that; although of course we will continue to need all our specialist laboratories, all our specialisms; we should set up a few interdisciplinary research centres specifically to bring these people together to target work on particular problems. [end p2]
They won't spend all their time in the interdisciplinary centre, quite a lot will still be spent in their own laboratories. Some of their time they will spend in this particular centre. In the end I think the idea appealed to many of us who have to decide these things, because we thought that if we had these particular centres, targetted on special research problems, that we might get a much greater delivery of ideas that we should ever have got, had people not come within communicating distance of one another because they were separated into different faculties. And we have started up a number of them.
I must tell you that the few universities that haven't got them don't think that they are at all a good idea. Universities who have got them think that they are quite the best thing since sliced bread, if sliced bread was a good thing anyway. We look forward to them … . with great eagerness because as we look, they really are each of them taking something where we do need to unlock the knowledge and we hope that this way we shall do it. Not only, of course, are we bringing the seven faculties together but bringing together all the very different methods of research, which are of course a research in themselves, to develop those methods upon these particular problems. And so Oxford has the new centre for Protein science.
Wisely, you are concentrating on six particular subjects. There are so many because, as the Vice Chancellor pointed out, we really are dealing with the nature of life itself and I think the more one knows about it, the more one realises the complete miracle that it ever works, or that it works so well. It is a total miracle of life and we just really want to know more about it. You are concentrating on things like blood clotting, immunology, all the chemical signals which try to give those signals which keep the body systems flowing freely along their chosen chemical paths, and not getting jammed up like the M25 and the M1. Also you are working on viruses. There used to be very little work done on viruses in my day. I think we were looking at the tobacco virus perhaps someone could remind me afterwards … . that is as far as [end p3] we had got and we need much more work on viruses, much more work on the secondary effects of enzymes and also on protein folding. It will be very exciting watching the results and I am very pleased that you have also got all the latest methods which you will need to deal with these highly complex problems.
And so its a great honour to be associated with this centre, and I do wish it well, and we shall watch the results very carefully and with the greatest possible eagerness. And then the third thing I want to say is, I am very pleased that you have got associated with it a number of people who are in industry and commerce. It is absolutely vital for our future as a country that we have the most successful industry and commerce because, believe you me, the more successful your economy, the more people take notice of you in international fields and you simply cannot have a successful economy or be a powerful nation unless you are very far advanced in science.
Now each of us, no matter how important the country, can only do a certain amount of research. I was quite astonished when I looked at some of the figures and was discussing it with some other scientists in other nations. On the whole we are lucky if we discover maybe 5%; of the new discoveries in science. That is quite a lot. Other countries might do a little bit more but not very many. The United States of course are larger and Japan does not do quite as much of the basic science as we do, although she is marvellous on application which is also very important. Now this figure 5%; brings one up really rather sharply. If you know that your industries have to be based on science, not only in their products but in the methods they use to give us traditional products. Many of us use the latest scientific methods, the latest computers, the latest chemical processes, the latest processes for testing as well and it means that we must have not only more and more contact with industry, but way beyond that, we rely on you scientists to keep contacts with other universities, not only in this country but the world over. I am most impressed when I go and visit other countries and go sometimes to the universities and go [end p4] to see the sort of research they are doing. I remember being in Romania at one time, and they are doing a lot of polymer research and they knew exactly what was going on in Edinburgh University. So it is absolutely vital to have a total knowledge and how it all fits in. But you people in universities, through the enormous number of specialist papers that you come across in your many contacts keep up with the worldwide science because we need to know what is going on so that we can have the latest use of it in our own industries.
I remember visiting a chemical works, not very far from Washington, soon after the Molecular Biology Unit at the University in Fens had discovered mono-clonal antibodies and no-one had in fact remembered to patent it and so every other industry was using it and we were just a little bit behind. That must not happen and so I am delighted that industry is having an input into this centre. I understand that for the sum of some £10,000 they can have access to the work. Its very good value, if I might say so, … very very very good value. You might reconsider the price … and it also means that they get the greater personal contact.
I am sure you feel the same about research as I do, that the more you do the more you know you have to do as each new piece may reveal a whole new aspect of knowledge which you hadn't quite realised was there … . Tennyson in Ulysses said; “all experience is an arch through which gleams the untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and ever as I move.” That is really just like science. You look through the archway to see the unknown world and the unknown world seems to get wider and wider the more work one does.
So none of us are going to be short of new projects for a very long time. I myself hope that this will have particular results in unlocking the knowledge of life, because if we know how it works [end p5] we may be able to get some of the remedies, so that when it doesn't work right, we can put it right which would be of such great importance to mankind as a whole.
It is a great honour and privilege for me to be here. I have great pleasure in declaring the Centre open and look forward tremendously to seeing some of the work that you are doing.