ABSTRACT
The Royal Institution of Great Britain was founded in 1799 for applying science to ‘the common purposes of life’, a brief that came in the nineteenth century to encompass a flourishing research school in the physical sciences and a strong programme of lectures for popular instruction and for the dissemination of science. 1 Its government was unusual, with an executive board of Managers elected from and by the members, and a board of Visitors, elected similarly but whose non-executive role was simply to report to the members on what the Managers were doing and to comment on their decisions. The officers were the President, Treasurer and Secretary, of whom the first had only formal duties unless there was a crisis in the affairs of the Institution. This office had become almost a heredity right of the Percy family in the persons of the successive Dukes of Northumberland. From 1842, the year of Dewar's birth, until 1930, seven years after his death, the post was occupied by the 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th Dukes, with only a break of eight years from 1865 to 1873 when it was held by Sir Henry Holland, Queen Victoria's physician. The Managers met on the first Monday of each month from November to July, and reported to a Monthly Meeting of Members later the same day. The Institution has always been situated at 21 Albemarle Street in London's West End. Its early years were associated with the work of Humphry Davy whose spectacular research on the chemical elements established its scientific reputation. A constant supporter was John Fuller, the owner of a plantation in Jamaica and sometime Member of Parliament. In 1833 he endowed a chair of chemistry for the benefit of Michael Faraday, who became then entitled the Fullerian Professor of Chemistry. A few months later Fuller endowed also a Professorship of Physiology. Both chairs were established as three-year posts, with the opportunity of renewal, but it was only the chemistry chair that became accepted as a post that a man could expect to occupy for his active life. The chemist usually attended the meetings of the Managers while the physiologist did not. Fuller's gift was £10000 in 3 per cent Consols and the dividend was split into three parts, one third, or £100 p.a., went to the chemist, that is to Faraday, one third to the physiologist, and one third to be left to accumulate until it was worth £10000, a target that was reached in 1865. There was then £16666/13/4 to divide, so each professor received £250 from the trust fund. Faraday's senior colleague was the chemist William Brande, and when he retired in 1852 he was succeeded by John Tyndall 2 with the title of Professor of Natural Philosophy. The cost of the salaries of Brande, Tyndall and Edward Frankland, 3 who held a Professorship of Chemistry for five years from 1863 to 1868, was carried by the Royal Institution itself. Faraday and Tyndall together made the RI (as it became popularly known) one of the leading scientific and social institutions in London. When Faraday retired in 1867 Tyndall became the Resident Professor, with the title of Superintendent of the House, and William Odling was offered the Fullerian chair. 4 He remained in post until he was elected Wayneflete Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1872, part-way through his second three-year appointment. His departure in 1873 left the Fullerian chair vacant and there seems to have been some doubt as to what the RI should then do, presumably because there was no obvious successor. Heinrich Debus, a friend of Tyndall from their days at Marburg, and Henry Armstrong were said to be candidates. 5 John Hall Gladstone 6 was then a Manager but he retired from this post to offer himself as a candidate, and was elected to the chair on 4 May 1874. He was two years older than the departing Odling. He was given the title of Director of the Chemical Laboratory, a name that was to cause some difficulty later since Tyndall was Superintendent of the House and Resident Professor. Gladstone's appointment was apparently not intended to be a permanent replacement of Faraday; the Managers recorded in a minute of 6 March 1876 that ‘Dr Gladstone does not wish to withdraw from the understanding that he would relinquish the professorship, when an approved successor had been found’. 7 He asked to stay on for some time after that date since he had some research that he was anxious to complete. He and Tyndall did not get on well together, for Gladstone was an evangelical Christian who was upset by the agnostic nature of Tyndall's notorious Presidential Address to the British Association in Belfast, a few months after Gladstone's election.
