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Article ID: CBB001220418

Thatcher, Scientist (2011)

Agar, Jon E. (Author)

Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Volume: 65
Pages: 215--232

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Science and government Public policy Chemistry Science and politics Science and economics 20th century Great Britain Thatcher, Margaret

This paper has two halves. First, I piece together what we know about Margaret Thatcher's training and employment as a scientist. She took science subjects at school; she studied chemistry at Oxford, arriving during World War II and coming under the influence (and comment) of two excellent women scientists, Janet Vaughan and Dorothy Hodgkin. She did a fourth-year dissertation on X-ray crystallography of gramicidin just after the war. She then gathered four years' experience as a working industrial chemist, at British Xylonite Plastics and at Lyons. Second, my argument is that, having lived the life of a working research scientist, she had a quite different view of science from that of any other minister responsible for science. This is crucial in understanding her reaction to the proposals---associated with the Rothschild reforms of the early 1970s---to reinterpret aspects of science policy in market terms. Although she was strongly pressured by bodies such as the Royal Society to reaffirm the established place of science as a different kind of entity---one, at least at core, that was unsuitable to marketization---Thatcher took a different line.`

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Description On “Margaret Thatcher's training and employment as a scientist.” (from abstract)

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