By the 1930s, Gregory had been at the helm for more than ten years and the magazine, building on changes made during the decade before, entered its first modern incarnation. Editorials continued to press for greater social justice and to appeal for a more prominent position for science in society. In this period, Nature would be declared "the most important weekly printed in English", and it would be banned from Nazi Germany. The 1930s also saw the arrival of a future Editor and the editorial reins handed over again, this time to the only shared editorship. Discoveries continued to flow in from the golden age of physics as the secrets of the atom, and the theory of atomic power, were revealed.
1931
A future Editor joins the team
"These phenomena..., like all others, demand an ultimate exposition of the truth". This innocuous passage from a 22 March 1930 review in Nature of the book Growth and Trophic Movement in Plants caught the eye of Editor Sir Richard Gregory — it shared his vision of science as the search for a deeper connection with the absolute truth. The 26-year-old Lionel John Farnham Brimble (pictured), Jack to his friends, was duly asked to join the Nature team as an assistant editor in 1931. Like Gregory, Brimble had earlier passed over a career in research to be an educator and communicator of science, and he flourished in the Nature office. In the late thirties, Brimble actively pushed for the teaching of biology in schools, particularly his speciality of botany, which was previously only taught to girls in British schools.
More on eugenics
Following the first leaders on eugenics in the 1920s, Nature continued to explore the merits of selective birth-control methods and the 1930s saw some of the strongest opinions ever aired in the magazine. Leader writers such as E. W. MacBride took issue with the over-reproduction by the working classes: "To-day, however stupid, they [the working class poor] survive and constitute an increasing proportion of the future nation". Over-population made England "a steam-boiler with an increasing pressure and no safety valve" and "compulsory birth control seems to us to be the only remedy..." Nature supported Major Church's bill, which proposed to legalize voluntary sterilization, and English statistician and geneticist R. A. Fisher's plan to raise the fertility of the middle classes. In the late 1930s the magazine softened its tone as (enforced) sterilization was employed in Nazi Germany, and as studies of better quality explored the relationship between Nature, nurture and intelligence. Picture courtesy Image Archive of the American Eugenics Movement.
1932
Discovery of the neutron
The discovery of the neutron completed the model of the atom — protons and neutrons in the nucleus orbited by electrons — and was a critical step in the research that would lead to the development of atomic weapons. There had been speculation about the existence of neutrons, but the final building block was put in place by James Chadwick a protégé of Ernst Rutherford at Cambridge. Chadwick read a paper in which neutrons had been produced but were misidentified as high-energy gamma-rays. Writing in Nature, he correctly interpreted his later experimental results: "The difficulties disappear, however, if it be assumed that the radiation consists of particles of mass 1 and charge 0, or neutrons." His findings led to the Nobel Prize for Physics just three years later. Today, the scattering of neutrons (a neutron is pictured, composed of one 'up' and two 'down' quarks) is used to probe the Nature of matter and the structures of proteins.
1935
Structure and content
The intense weekly leaders championing scientific progress and pioneering social awareness reached a zenith, according to Alfred Bennett, who declared in London's Evening Standard that "I regard Nature as the most important weekly printed in English, far more important than any political weekly", even if he did continue to say that "the writing in it is considerably inferior to the matter in it." The 'Notes' section was renamed 'News and Views', which contained much the same mix of informal news and lightly opinionated content and was very different from what it would later become. The reorganization led to a new double-page section, 'Research Notes', which detailed research in other journals — its legacy lives to this day as the 'Research Highlights' section of Nature. The number of 'Letters to the Editor' expanded to double figures, and supplements continued to thrive — 'History in the Archives of the Royal Society' being one example. By now, the journal now has 47 pages and a much crisper masthead, pictured.
1936
A merger
The British Science Guild (BSG) and the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) had always been two different trains travelling on the same tracks and stopping at similar stations. They had common policies to advance the status of science in society and with Gregory now president of the BAAS, the two bodies had much the same in the way of driver, crew and passengers. Although energized by Lockyer's and then Gregory's zeal for the gospel of science, the BSG would always struggle, not to find a voice (collection of Norman Lockyer memorial lectures is pictured) but to be heard among scientists, politicians and the public as a non-professional, apolitical unit. In 1936, the inevitable happened and the organizations merged: Gregory became leader of a new Division for Social and International Relations of Science within the BAAS, and a new journal, The Advancement of Science, replaced the BSG's annual report.
1937
Nature banned in Nazi Germany
From 1933, Jewish academics — and later, German scientists with Jewish wives — were expelled from Nazi Germany. Nature, in editorials such as 'Freedom of the Mind', followed the exodus or "German disaster" with assertive fervour: "German men of science have been made subservient to the engineers of a ruthless political machine." The 228 émigré scholars who had made their way to Britain were welcomed. Nature was known in Germany as the "abominable Jewish journal" and German science minister Bernhard Rust (pictured) declared in November 1937 that, "This journal [Nature] must be expelled from general use in scientific libraries." See our Editors and Eras section, where Uwe Hofeld and Lennart Olsson have expanded upon their 2006 Correspondence in a special essay; readers may also find a news story from 1984 of interest.
1938
The Gregory era closes
With Gregory (pictured) nearing his 75th birthday and war approaching, he resigned and the reins of the Nature editorship were handed over to A. J. V. Gale and L. J. F. Brimble. Between them, they had experienced more than 25 years at Nature, and with Gale handling physical sciences and Brimble biological sciences, the two took up a joint editorship that was to last for more than 20 years. It is widely agreed that under Gregory the journal became an international institution. Subscriptions increased, and the 'Letters to the Editor' section matured into the eminent vehicle for scientific communication that Nature's founders had envisaged more than 50 years before. Under Gregory, the charming but idiosyncratic novelties, such as readers reports of their pets' behaviour and bad scientific poetry (from great scientists, too), made way for a more focused and professional publication. This was intent on changing not just science but Britain and the world by means of a unique blend of up-to-date scientific correspondence and strong journalism that was socially aware but politically unbiased.
1939
The Second World War
"Once more the burden of war is laid upon us" begins the leader of 9 September 1939 upon the outbreak of the Second World War. Nature's opening gambit strikes immediately to the ideological heart of the conflict with "it is not merely political liberty that is at stake...it is the spirit of man." Nature's conscience had tussled with the angst of science as a weapon of war before: "...in the time of the Great War the prostitution of science to warfare was deeply felt by British men of science...the activity in rearmament is renewing...the same problem of conscience." Nature had supported the Moral Re-Armament movement but highlighted "the lag which exists between the progress of scientific investigation and the ethical advance of mankind." The journal urged that the knowledge and energies of those with scientific training "must be directed without remission to the service of the allied cause", but not for "destruction, but a constructive ideal."
The atom deciphered; the atomic bomb begun
The announcement of uranium fission — and the prospect of atomic weaponry — arrived on the eve of war, but on the back of decades of discovery in the physical sciences. In 1932 John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atom using the first apparatus for artificially accelerating atomic particles to high energies: the Cockcroft–Walton accelerator, which earned the pair the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics A month later the neutron was discovered (see 1932 entry), and in September 1934, Leo Szilard and T. H. Chalmers observed the emission of neutrons from a beryllium target bombarded with gamma- and then X-rays, indicating the potential of neutron chain-reactions in radioactive elements to release immense quantities of energy. This was confirmed experimentally in 1939, when Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn proposed a process whereby addition of a neutron could split the uranium nucleus (pictured), which they called 'fission', as in the division of living cells. Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on which Nature Correspondence reveals more.
By the 1930s, Gregory had been at the helm for more than ten years and the magazine, building on changes made during the decade before, entered its first modern incarnation. Editorials continued to press for greater social justice and to appeal for a more prominent position for science in society. In this period, Nature would be declared "the most important weekly printed in English", and it would be banned from Nazi Germany. The 1930s also saw the arrival of a future Editor and the editorial reins handed over again, this time to the only shared editorship. Discoveries continued to flow in from the golden age of physics as the secrets of the atom, and the theory of atomic power, were revealed. 
"These phenomena..., like all others, demand an ultimate exposition of the truth". This innocuous passage from a 22 March 1930 review in Nature of the book Growth and Trophic Movement in Plants caught the eye of Editor Sir Richard Gregory — it shared his vision of science as the search for a deeper connection with the absolute truth. The 26-year-old Lionel John Farnham Brimble (pictured), Jack to his friends, was duly asked to join the Nature team as an assistant editor in 1931. Like Gregory, Brimble had earlier passed over a career in research to be an educator and communicator of science, and he flourished in the Nature office. In the late thirties, Brimble actively pushed for the teaching of biology in schools, particularly his speciality of botany, which was previously only taught to girls in British schools. 
Following the first leaders on eugenics in the 1920s, Nature continued to explore the merits of selective birth-control methods and the 1930s saw some of the strongest opinions ever aired in the magazine. Leader writers such as E. W. MacBride took issue with the over-reproduction by the working classes: "To-day, however stupid, they [the working class poor] survive and constitute an increasing proportion of the future nation". Over-population made England "a steam-boiler with an increasing pressure and no safety valve" and "compulsory birth control seems to us to be the only remedy..." Nature supported Major Church's bill, which proposed to legalize voluntary sterilization, and English statistician and geneticist R. A. Fisher's plan to raise the fertility of the middle classes. In the late 1930s the magazine softened its tone as (enforced) sterilization was employed in Nazi Germany, and as studies of better quality explored the relationship between Nature, nurture and intelligence. Picture courtesy Image Archive of the American Eugenics Movement. 
The discovery of the neutron completed the model of the atom — protons and neutrons in the nucleus orbited by electrons — and was a critical step in the research that would lead to the development of atomic weapons. There had been speculation about the existence of neutrons, but the final building block was put in place by James Chadwick a protégé of Ernst Rutherford at Cambridge. Chadwick read a paper in which neutrons had been produced but were misidentified as high-energy gamma-rays. Writing in Nature, he correctly interpreted his later experimental results: "The difficulties disappear, however, if it be assumed that the radiation consists of particles of mass 1 and charge 0, or neutrons." His findings led to the Nobel Prize for Physics just three years later. Today, the scattering of neutrons (a neutron is pictured, composed of one 'up' and two 'down' quarks) is used to probe the Nature of matter and the structures of proteins. 
The intense weekly leaders championing scientific progress and pioneering social awareness reached a zenith, according to Alfred Bennett, who declared in London's Evening Standard that "I regard Nature as the most important weekly printed in English, far more important than any political weekly", even if he did continue to say that "the writing in it is considerably inferior to the matter in it." The 'Notes' section was renamed 'News and Views', which contained much the same mix of informal news and lightly opinionated content and was very different from what it would later become. The reorganization led to a new double-page section, 'Research Notes', which detailed research in other journals — its legacy lives to this day as the 'Research Highlights' section of Nature. The number of 'Letters to the Editor' expanded to double figures, and supplements continued to thrive — 'History in the Archives of the Royal Society' being one example. By now, the journal now has 47 pages and a much crisper masthead, pictured. 
The British Science Guild (BSG) and the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) had always been two different trains travelling on the same tracks and stopping at similar stations. They had common policies to advance the status of science in society and with Gregory now president of the BAAS, the two bodies had much the same in the way of driver, crew and passengers. Although energized by Lockyer's and then Gregory's zeal for the gospel of science, the BSG would always struggle, not to find a voice (collection of Norman Lockyer memorial lectures is pictured) but to be heard among scientists, politicians and the public as a non-professional, apolitical unit. In 1936, the inevitable happened and the organizations merged: Gregory became leader of a new Division for Social and International Relations of Science within the BAAS, and a new journal, The Advancement of Science, replaced the BSG's annual report. 
From 1933, Jewish academics — and later, German scientists with Jewish wives — were expelled from Nazi Germany. Nature, in editorials such as 'Freedom of the Mind', followed the exodus or "German disaster" with assertive fervour: "German men of science have been made subservient to the engineers of a ruthless political machine." The 228 émigré scholars who had made their way to Britain were welcomed. Nature was known in Germany as the "abominable Jewish journal" and German science minister Bernhard Rust (pictured) declared in November 1937 that, "This journal [Nature] must be expelled from general use in scientific libraries." See our Editors and Eras section, where Uwe Ho
feld and Lennart Olsson have expanded upon their 2006 Correspondence in a special essay; readers may also find a news story from 1984 of interest. 
With Gregory (pictured) nearing his 75th birthday and war approaching, he resigned and the reins of the Nature editorship were handed over to A. J. V. Gale and L. J. F. Brimble. Between them, they had experienced more than 25 years at Nature, and with Gale handling physical sciences and Brimble biological sciences, the two took up a joint editorship that was to last for more than 20 years. It is widely agreed that under Gregory the journal became an international institution. Subscriptions increased, and the 'Letters to the Editor' section matured into the eminent vehicle for scientific communication that Nature's founders had envisaged more than 50 years before. Under Gregory, the charming but idiosyncratic novelties, such as readers reports of their pets' behaviour and bad scientific poetry (from great scientists, too), made way for a more focused and professional publication. This was intent on changing not just science but Britain and the world by means of a unique blend of up-to-date scientific correspondence and strong journalism that was socially aware but politically unbiased. 
"Once more the burden of war is laid upon us" begins the leader of 9 September 1939 upon the outbreak of the Second World War. Nature's opening gambit strikes immediately to the ideological heart of the conflict with "it is not merely political liberty that is at stake...it is the spirit of man." Nature's conscience had tussled with the angst of science as a weapon of war before: "...in the time of the Great War the prostitution of science to warfare was deeply felt by British men of science...the activity in rearmament is renewing...the same problem of conscience." Nature had supported the Moral Re-Armament movement but highlighted "the lag which exists between the progress of scientific investigation and the ethical advance of mankind." The journal urged that the knowledge and energies of those with scientific training "must be directed without remission to the service of the allied cause", but not for "destruction, but a constructive ideal." 
The announcement of uranium fission — and the prospect of atomic weaponry — arrived on the eve of war, but on the back of decades of discovery in the physical sciences. In 1932 John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atom using the first apparatus for artificially accelerating atomic particles to high energies: the Cockcroft–Walton accelerator, which earned the pair the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics A month later the neutron was discovered (see 1932 entry), and in September 1934, Leo Szilard and T. H. Chalmers observed the emission of neutrons from a beryllium target bombarded with gamma- and then X-rays, indicating the potential of neutron chain-reactions in radioactive elements to release immense quantities of energy. This was confirmed experimentally in 1939, when Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn proposed a process whereby addition of a neutron could split the uranium nucleus (pictured), which they called 'fission', as in the division of living cells. Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on which Nature Correspondence reveals more. 
