Hopewell Centre, Hong Kong

Ringing in the new With the New Year, it may not come amiss for this be-whiskered old philosopher (now feeling his age a little-after all, 2000 years is quite good going, and no doubt a great strain on the pension fund!) to change his style slightly, while continuing to ‘comment’ and ‘query’ as in previous years. Verulam

The time lens Any historical account of a subject is almost certain to put a ‘time lens’ on the immediate past so that it appears to the reader that very little occurred before the start of the present century. So it is with the history of science. And yet at the same time there are sufficient eminent men of earlier years (Newton, Galileo, Archimedes, Euclid, etc.) to give the impression to school children that science has been progressing for at least 1OOO years. One should never forget to add the words, ‘but slowly!’ in reference to anything that occurred before the beginning of the 19th century. Where the time lens really works is when we look at the history of technology, for by inference, in what might be called a traditional sense, technologists pick up the brilliant discoveries of scientists and exploit them for hard cash. E.R. Laithwaite

Some 400 members and their guests heard Professor Eric Laithwaite give the 1980 Maitland Lecture (for text see page 5) in London on 13 November last. Institution guests for the evening included Lord Kings Norton, Lord and Lady Miles, Sir Frank and Lady Mason, as well as Dr. Oleg Kerensky (1st Maitland Lecturer, 1959) and Mrs Kerensky, and Sir Ove Arup (Maitland Lecturer 1968) with Lady Amp.