Scientist of the Day - William Beveridge
Portrait of William Beveridge, undated photograph, Library of Congress (Wikimedia commons)
William Beveridge, an English economist and politician, was born Mar. 5, 1879. Beveridge is best known for his leadership of the London School of Economics for 15 years and his authorship of the postwar British welfare state, but he merits notice here for the role he played in finding jobs and refuge for the scores of scientists displaced by Hitler’s abrupt reform of the German civil service. When the Law for the Preservation of the Professional Civil Service was enacted in Germany on Apr. 7, 1933, declaring that Jews and other non-Aryan groups were ineligible to be academics in German universities, thousands of people lost their professorships and their source of livelihood, including many scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Max Born, and Max Perutz.
Beveridge was traveling in Europe when he received news of the purge, and he immediately thought, as did many people, “We have to help!” Unlike most people, he was in a position to do something about it. When he returned home later that month, he immediately set about organizing what came to be called the Academic Assistance Council. The AAC released a public statement in May, and elected a board of governors, including renowned physicist Ernest Rutherford as president and biologist Gowland Hopkins as vice-president. Both were Nobel Prize winners of international repute. The AAC called for British universities and research institutions to offer homes and jobs to displaced German academics, most of whom happened to be Jewish.
The German scientists thus aided make an impressive list. Einstein didn’t need rescue, since he was out of Germany when the Law was enacted and never returned, opting to go to the new Institute for Advanced Studies in the United States. But many went to England. Hans Bethe in Tübingen, who would soon discover the source of the Sun’s energy, and Rudolf Peierls were invited to the University of Manchester in 1933. Hans Krebs, who would discover the metabolic pathway known as the Krebs cycle, was asked by Gowland Hopkins to join him at Cambridge in July of 1933. Max Born at Göttingen received an invitation to St. John's College, Cambridge, and then to the University of Edinburgh. Ernst Chain, one of the future penicillin miracle workers, was asked by J.B.S. Haldane to come to University College Hospital in London.
Blue plaque on a house in London, honoring William Beveridge, making no mention of his role in founding the Academic Assistance Council in 1933 (english-heritage.org.uk)
We thought we might mention one unusual invitation involving art historian Aby Warburg, who had established a massive private library in Hamburg that became a cultural center. Warburg had died in 1929, but he was a Jew, and his library therefore tainted. After the Law was enacted, the entire Library and its staff were relocated to London, and they moved into their own building in 1934, becoming the Warburg Institute. Art historian Edgar Wind came along, and a few years later, in 1936, the greatest art historian of them all, Ernst Gombrich, found a home there as well. The Warburg Institute is still in London, serving historians of science and ideas, as well as historians of art.
The translocations continued until war broke out in 1939, and even beyond. Physicist Hermann Bondi was invited to Churchill College, Cambridge, by Arthur Eddington, in 1937. That same year, Max Perutz, who would discover the molecular structure of hemoglobin, was invited to the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge by J.D. Bernal. The philosopher of science Karl Popper moved from Vienna to London as well. The number of people aided by Beveridge and the AAC was well over 1500, and the brain drain from Germany to England was catastrophic for German science. Kicking Jewish German scientists out was not one of Hitler’s brightest moments. Taking them in was a very smart move by England, and Beveridge gets much of the credit, not only for thinking of it, but for taking the initiative to make the idea a reality. His motives were humanitarian, but the results had sweeping cultural significance that is still being measured.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
