Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

If Michael Faraday was alive today, he would probably choose to become
a City analyst. Or at least a television presenter. The chances are slim
that, career and funding prospects being what they are, he would choose
to dedicate his analytical skills and talent for communication to the one
career for which they would be best suited: a university lecturer.

Faraday was born 200 years ago tomorrow (September 22). His success
in combining a working class background with scientific achievement has
recently made him a hero of successive conservative prime ministers. Margaret
Thatcher, for example, has frequently referred to Faraday in speeches emphasising
that the value of scientists lies in the practical applications of their
work. John Major made a similar point last week when awarding the prizes
for the Young Engineers for Britain competition, organised by the Engineering
Council.

It’s certainly good to see Faraday’s portrait given a place among modern
icons through its appearance on the new £20 note (remember that the
French have been putting their philosophers on banknotes for years). But
there are dangers, too, in portraying Faraday as a ‘doer’ rather than a
‘thinker’ – particularly since there is some evidence that, apart from his
lack of a mathematical training, his intellectual capacities were just as
strong as his practical ones (see ‘The myth of Michael Faraday’, this issue).

The dangers are twofold. Thatcher’s frequent reference to the fact that
Faraday succeeded as a scientist despite his lack of formal university education
smacks of anti-intellectualism. The worlds of both science and technology
are infinitely more complex than they were in Faraday’s day. A university
training – even in the sciences – may well have been a luxury in the 19th
century. Today, it is essential for the scientists and engineers of the
future.

To argue that the social status of engineers will automatically be raised
by linking them (as on the £20 note) to national prosperity is equally
naive. If the government really wanted to do something, it should be pumping
more money into research as a social commitment to the future health of
the nation through science and its applications, not merely urging others
to do this.

Standing on the same spot in the Royal Institution from which Faraday
delivered his most notable lectures, Mark Richmond, the chairman of the
Science and Engineering Research Council, delivered some uncharacteristically
stinging criticisms of the government’s attitude to university research
(see This Week). Faraday’s lesson is, surely, that research and teaching
flourish best when they are carried out hand in hand. It is a lesson that,
with the current low morale and underfunding in Britain’s university research
laboratories, the government would do well to reconsider.