An experiment in biophysics

Abstract

I am indebted to the Council of the Royal Society for this opportunity of describing the early biophysics developments at King’s College, for the inception and encouragement of which the Society has itself been so much responsible. At the end of the last war the Society was extremely active in supporting new research schemes in Universities for which the financial procedures normal to such institutions might not be appropriate. It had for some years been my intention to engage in biophysical research, and I submitted a scheme of work to the Society early in 1946, receiving much help and encouragement from Professor A. V. Hill and Sir Edward Salisbury. A Committee of the Society was set up under the chairmanship of Sir Edward Salisbury to consider the scheme. General approval was given a little later in the same year, but the biophysical nature of the programme prompted the Treasury to suggest that the Medical Research Council would be the appropriate body to administer the scheme I had in mind; the Medical Research Council gave its approval in March 1947 to the formation of a Biophysics Research Unit with myself as honorary director, and a Biophysics Committee with Sir Edward Salisbury as Chairman was also formed at this time. The former Secretary of the Medical Research Council, Sir Edward Mellanby, and his successor, Dr H. P. Himsworth, together with the headquarters staff, have been most helpful and considerate, and I cannot emphasize too strongly how encouraging this has been to us during the early stages of the Unit’s existence. The generous support of King’s College, of the University of London, and of the Rockefeller Foundation has enabled the work to go forward with greater impetus and on a bigger scale than would otherwise have been possible. The total number of scientists engaged on biophysical research at King’s College is at the present time 26, and the corresponding number of technicians 23.