The Man of Science as Aristocrat

Abstract

THE other day I listened with great pleasure to Sir Richard Gregory's Aldred Lecture1, and admired once again his instinct for bringing together into the most fruitful association, facts and consequences lying far apart, and extracting wide suggestions and new problems from the assemblage. But the readers of NATURE do not need to be reminded that Sir Richard was a brilliant editor so that without any sacrifice of its world-wide scientific usefulness he also made this weekly journal a medium of interpretation and understanding between one type of specialist and another and between specialists in general and the man of general intelligence and broad curiosity outside the ranks of the specialist worker. The Royal Society began as an assembly of curious gentlemen, amateurs all, and how else could it have begun? It could include Pepys, for example, to his great benefit certainly and maybe to its own.