The Lord Zuckerman | |
|---|---|
 Zuckerman photographed inTobruk in 1943 during theWestern Desert Campaign | |
| Born | Solomon Zuckerman (1904-05-30)30 May 1904 |
| Died | 1 April 1993(1993-04-01) (aged 88) London, England, United Kingdom |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | University of Cape Town Yale University |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Zoology,anatomy,operational research |
| Institutions | University of Oxford University of Birmingham University of East Anglia |
Solomon "Solly"Zuckerman, Baron ZuckermanOM KCB FRS[1] (30 May 1904 – 1 April 1993) was a Britishpublic servant,zoologist andoperational research pioneer. He is best remembered as a scientific advisor to the Allies on bombing strategy in theSecond World War, for his work to advance the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, and for his role in bringing attention to global economic issues.[2][3][4][5]
Solomon Zuckerman[6] was born inCape Town in the BritishCape Colony (modern-day South Africa) on 30 May 1904, the second child and eldest son of Moses and Rebecca Zuckerman (née Glaser). Both his parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from theRussian Empire.[7]
He was educated at theSouth African College School.[7] After studying medicine at theUniversity of Cape Town and later attendingYale University,[3] he went to London in 1926 to complete his studies atUniversity College Hospital Medical School.
He began his career at theLondon Zoological Society in 1928, and worked as a researchanatomist until 1932. In this period he founded the intellectual dining club,Tots and Quots.[8] He denied, as early as 1928, thatAustralopithecus was a genealogical link between apes and humans and maintained this belief throughout his career.[9] In 1932, Zuckerman published his most noteworthy pre-war work,Social Life of Monkeys and Apes.[10]
Zuckerman taught at theUniversity of Oxford from 1934 to 1945, during which time he was elected to aFellowship of the Royal Society.[1][3]
During the Second World War, Zuckerman worked on several research projects for the British government, including the design of a civilian defence helmet (colloquially known as theZuckerman helmet) and measuring the effect of bombing on people and buildings and an assessment of the bombardment (Operation Corkscrew) of the Italian island ofPantelleria in 1943. He was thus one of the pioneers of the science ofoperational research. He was given an honorary commission as awing commander in the Administrative and Special Duties Branch of theRoyal Air Force on 13 May 1943,[11] and promoted to honorarygroup captain on 20 September 1943.[12]
Zuckerman's suggestion, made when he was Scientific Director of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU),[13] and accepted by Air Chief MarshalArthur Tedder and Supreme Allied Commander U.S. GeneralDwight D. Eisenhower in the lead-up to theNormandy landings, that the Allies concentrate on disrupting the German-controlled French transportation system through heavyaerial bombing of rail lines and marshalling yards, was officially called theTransportation Plan,[14] but was privately referred to by its opponents as "Zuckerman's Folly".[15] A focus of Zuckerman's plan, learned in Italy, was to target locomotives and the capacity to service them due to a shortage in France prior to the Normandy campaign. This had the effect of pushing railheads back from the front causing trucks to be diverted from a role of manoeuvre to one of logistics, which resulted in greater petrol consumption.[16]
After the war, Zuckerman was appointed aCompanion of the Order of the Bath in the 1946New Year Honours.[17] He left the Royal Air Force on 1 September 1946,[18] and was then Professor of Anatomy at theUniversity of Birmingham until 1968, chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence from 1960 to 1966, and the firstchief scientific adviser to the British Government from 1964 to 1971.[3] He was also a member of aRoyal Commission investigating environmental pollution from 26 February 1970.[19][20] In 1951 Zuckerman published his paper summarizing the existing data both for and against the possibility of postnataloogenesis.[21]
He taught at theUniversity of East Anglia from 1969 to 1974, where he was involved in setting up a school of environmental sciences.[3] He served as Secretary of theLondon Zoological Society from 1955 to 1977 and as its president from 1977 to 1984. Some of Zuckerman's achievements include being a pioneer in the study of primate behaviour.[22] His more notable publications includeThe Social Life of Monkeys and Apes[23] published in 1931, andScientists and War in 1966.[24] Zuckerman wrote two volumes of autobiography:From Apes to Warlords[25] andMonkeys, Men and Missiles.[26]
He is also credited for making science a normal part of government policy in the Western world and wrote many articles on this topic, including some formal lectures, collected inBeyond the Ivory Tower. There Zuckerman wrote about the role of science in policy, and how it developed in public (i.e. large funded collaborations) and in private (i.e. behind closed doors in laboratories).[27] He was concerned that the public should understand the contested and serendipitous process of scientific discovery, in contrast to the discovery accounts which were popular, illustrating withhoax and eminent disagreements, at the frontiers of science, because ultimately science ought to serve the public. This led to a concern about the policy for investing in science, orForesight, which could not, in his view, expect to know what scientific discovery was likely to occur, and therefore how to choose projects for funding. He also advanced the case for engineers and other scientists to adopt an oath, similar to theHippocratic Oath, to consider the impacts of their work and avoid damaging the world, particularly the natural environment.
Zuckerman was knighted in the1956 New Year Honours,[28][29] promotedKnight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the1964 New Year Honours,[30] elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1965,[31] appointed to theOrder of Merit on 23 April 1968,[32] elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970,[33] and was awarded alife peerage on 5 April 1971,[34] taking the titleBaron Zuckerman ofBurnham Thorpe in the County ofNorfolk.[35] He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1943.[1]
Zuckerman met his future wife,Lady Joan Isaacs, daughter ofGerald Isaacs, 2nd Marquess of Reading, inOxford. They married in 1939 and had two children, a son, Paul, and a daughter, Stella. Stella Zuckerman died in 1992, predeceasing her parents. Joan, Lady Zuckerman entertained and did landscapes using pastels. She died in 2000.[36]
Martha Gellhorn described Zuckerman in a letter written to his wife Joan in 1993, shortly after Zuckerman died in London following aheart attack, aged 88:
No doubt he was a strain as a husband, even as a father, but what a wonder he was in himself. The tirelessly inquiring mind, the energy for work, the variety of his thinking. As he grew old, his vanity was touching, as if he didn't really know his own unique value and he had to reassure himself with the names of all the important people he was seeing, when he was far more unusual and far brainier than any of them.[3]
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| Professional and academic associations | ||
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| Preceded by | Secretary of theZoological Society of London 1955–1977 | Succeeded by |
| Government offices | ||
| First | Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government 1964–1971 | Succeeded by |