Activist Scientists

 
We seem to have forgotten that scientists can be social activists. In my time it was common for scientist to take an active role in social causes. It was the time of "Science for the People" and similar organizations. Very little remains of that kind of activism, David Suzuki is just about the only one of those scientists who is still trying to change the world. Some of them have become administrators and advisers to Presidents.

Given the antagonism that greets modern scientists who step out of line (i.e., Richard Dawkins) I can understand why social activism is out of favor.

I was reminded that in the early part of the last century, there were scientists who took up social causes. I happened to stumble on the website of my colleague, Donald Forsdyke of Queen's University [Haldane's Rule]. Here's one of the photographs from that site.

JBS Haldane addressing a 'United Front' meeting in January 1937. Photograph from the Sun newspaper reproduced in Ronald Clark's 1968 biography of Haldane, published by Hodder & Stoughton.

It's hard to picture any of today's most prominent scientist in such a scene. Perhaps the "United Front" movement¹ is too liberal for the average scienist?

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1. It was a socialist movement with strong ties to Marxism as a philosophy and communism as an economic and political strategy