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Published online 14 April 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/458807a
John Maddox 1925–2009
In memory of a transformative editor of Nature.
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So much is clear.
... What, then, is to be done?
Beat me to it Henry. Then again, I did say as much to someone else earlier today. No one has mentioned that John could be a mischievous bugger when he felt like it. He definitely had a sense of humour. I certainly remember the clouds of cigarette smoke. sometimes managed to kick the habit long enough for a lunch. I remember a particularly entertaining session at the Athenaeum when Lord Shackleton was successfully lining up Nature and New Scientist behind what turned out to be a failed attempt to buy a nunnery.
'To be sure' is the JM phrase my generation of Nature staff remember (I came as Chief SubEditor in 1969). But I deeply respected John's literary skills, and even his pedantic foibles: e.g. 'in (not under) the circumstances'. He had us writing summaries of the longer articles when he felt the authors were not communicating adequately. In the era of 'hot metal' typography, two of us made the weekly journey to Fisher-Knight in St Albans to sign off the last pages, or even to wait for John to finish his editorial! He had an instinct for writing just one or two lines too much, which we then had the pleasure of cutting back in proof. He made Nature fun - we certainly enjoyed bringing out the Centenary issue (1.11.69) and the celebratory conference and dinner. John Morris
"Spurious co-authorship." Euphemism, not!
John Maddox's dislike of the tedious and boring revolutionized Nature and scientific writing especially for many of us who started in the late '60s - "We have discovered X" was his recommendation for starting a scientific note or paper. A great man and leader of scientific thought, direction and exposition in advance of the 21st C. George Fink
My favorite memory was listening to JM's talk one night at Harvard Science Center (that must be sometime after 1995, but before 2003), in which he told a story to the audience in the lecture hall that he and his colleagues at Nature floated a short-lived idea of creating a subsidiary journal, called ?Second Nature?, to find a room for publishing those papers rejected by Nature.
His book "What Remains to be Known" was a true classic to me. We need more men of his ilk who have the perspective to remember that our knowledge in science is still fragmentary and we need to spend more time in humble consideration of our ignorance. A truly great man Donald Weaver