Upon first hearing of ‘The X-Club’ you probably imagine a group of superhumans, responsible for saving the free world from some terrible intergalactic catastrophe. However, they were in reality a group of Victorian scientists that were instead responsible for saving the UK from scientific ambivalence, arguably the more impressive of the two feats.
Among The X-Club’s nine members were the brilliant biologist T.H. Huxley, the prodigious physicist John Tyndall, and the spectacular sociologist Herbert Spencer. All of the members were driven by a conscious decision to rail against the traditions of the church-driven scientific agenda, claiming cultural leadership for the scientists of the day. As well as campaigning vigorously for the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin (more of which here), they also solicited government support for science, procured jobs for scientists and were instrumental in demanding that science be taught at every educational level.
As well as being brilliant scientists in their own right, these Victorian gentlemen were also outstanding communicators, utilising a variety of media to explain science to a range of different audiences. Amongst other activities, they wrote textbooks, contributed to scientific journals, gave popular lectures and advised politicians. In short, they were science communicators extraordinaire, laying the foundations for the relatively egalitarian environment in which we as scientists now operate. Superhumans they may not have been, but that only serves to make what they achieved all the more remarkable.
The original X-Club had a total of nine members, who were active from 1864 to 1892. In the spirit of this original troupe I now offer the following members for consideration into ‘The XX-Club’, so called because they now welcome into their ranks three female members:
Professor Brian Cox AKA ‘The Dream’
Sir Tim Berners-Lee AKA ‘The Web’
Professor Nancy Rothwell AKA ‘The Balance’
Professor Richard Dawkins AKA ‘The Watchmaker’
Baron Robert Winston AKA ‘The Body’
Dame (Susan) Jocelyn Bell Burnell AKA ‘The Pulse’
Sir David Attenborough AKA ‘The Silver Back’
Baroness Susan Adele Greenfield AKA ‘The Brain’
Professor Stephen Hawking AKA ‘The Fourth Dimension’
My only criteria for selection were that these were scientists who were well known for both their research and also the promotion of their field to the general public. In keeping with the original X-Club, I also limited my selection to those scientists currently working in the UK.
Looking at this selection it is interesting to see that it is fairly dominated by physicists, with a third of the members conducting research primarily in that area. Whilst I admit that part of this might be to do with my own background (MPhys in Physics with Space Science and Technology, PhD in Atmospheric Physics), I also think that it reflects the zeitgeist of the current popularisation of science. Just as the dominance of the original X-Club by evolutionary biologists (three of the nine members were practitioners of either Natural History or Natural Philosophy) reflected the prevalence of Darwinism in the psyche of the public consciousness, so too does the make-up of The XX-Club mirror today’s fascination with the exploration of the very large (via space exploration) and the very small (via particle colliders). Whether or not that is a case of cause or effect is a debate for another day. For now, let’s just marvel at the quality of the current crop of science communicators that make such a debate possible.
Post by: Sam Illingworth
Interesting. I’ve never heard of ‘The X-Club’ but I really like the idea. Now we need a US-based ‘XX-Club’.