Discovery Is Always Political

COMMENT MODELLING Digital replicas of ECONOMICS 100-year-old PUBLISHING Concerns from WEATHER Sudden warming parts, factories and cities — bestseller explains our Latin America about equity forecast for Southern promise and perils p.490 grim times p.492 under Plan S p.495 Hemisphere spring p.495 ILLUSTRATION BY SEÑOR SALME BY ILLUSTRATION Discovery is always political David Kaiser traces the roots of government support for science, in the first of a series of essays on how the past 150 years have shaped the research system. ate in August 1609, the Italian astrono- “scaled the stairs in the highest campaniles annual salary of 1,000 florins — back when mer Galileo Galilei wrote excitedly to in Venice to observe at sea sails and vessels 1,000 florins really meant something1. his brother-in-law, relating the fast- so far away that … two hours or more were Galileo was only getting started. Turning Lmoving events of that summer. A few weeks required before they could be seen without his new telescope towards the heavens, he earlier, Galileo had heard rumours that a my spyglass.” The senate voted immediately discovered (among other things) four moons spyglass had been invented in Flanders (now to grant Galileo an appointment for life at orbiting Jupiter. Craftily, he named them part of Belgium). He quickly produced an the University of Padua in Italy, with an the Medicean Stars in honour of Cosimo improved version, setting off a new wave of II de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany. rumours. Soon, the Venetian senate called 50 YEARS OF NATURE The gambit worked: within a year of that on him to demonstrate his device. Galileo Anniversary collection letter about his Venetian success, Gali- boasted to his family about the “numer- go.nature.com/nature50 leo had landed an even larger salary (and ous gentlemen and senators” who had shed his teaching duties) as the official ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reser26ved . SEPTEMBER 2019 | VOL 573 | NATURE | 487 COMMENT natural philosopher of the Medici court heavily in academic research across the career are emblematic of the expanded roles in Florence2. natural sciences4. of science and technology in the era. Before Galileo had a knack for convincing Even amid such support, however, leading long, he was consulting for the Ministry of government officials and courtly patrons to industrialists such as Werner von Siemens Finance and the Russian Navy, ultimately support his research. Tracing his exploits, as feared that Germany was losing its edge. serving as director of the country’s Chief he darted from one benefactor to the next, Concerted lobbying led to the establishment Bureau of Weights and Measures, in which we might recognize glimmers of today’s of a new government-funded institution in capacity he helped to introduce the metric enterprising scientists. A good 250 years 1887: the Physikalisch-Technische Reich- system in Russia. Much like Otto von Bis- after Galileo’s time, however, a rather differ- sanstalt in Berlin. Headed by the physicist marck and other nation-builders in Ger- ent relationship between government and Hermann von Helmholtz, its mandate was many, Tsar Alexander II was eager to bolster science began to take hold. to accelerate work at the intersection of basic industrial development throughout his Just when astronomer Norman Lockyer science, applied research and industrial country. Central to those efforts was invest- was founding Nature in 1869, major shifts in development. Within a few years, pioneer- ing heavily in precision metrology; the tsar the government–science nexus were unfold- ing efforts there to evaluate competing pro- found eager and skilful natural scientists ing across many parts of the world. posals for large-scale street lighting — which such as Mendeleev to help7. required careful In the same decade, Japan underwent EMPIRE BUILDING “Spending on measurements of enormous changes, too. The Meiji Resto- During the middle decades of the nineteenth science became the radiation out- ration of 1868 marked a period of open- century, the British Empire swelled to include an investment put from various ing up for the formerly isolated country. about one-quarter of Earth’s land and to hold in hearts and devices — yielded The emperor’s Charter Oath proclaimed dominion over nearly one-quarter of its minds.” such precise that: “Knowledge shall be sought all over population. At this time, several prominent recordings of the the world, and thereby the foundations of British politicians — including former and spectrum of blackbody radiation that pre- imperial rule shall be strengthened.” The future prime ministers — sought to boost vailing physical theories could no longer government began investing in manu- the fortunes of science and technology. In accommodate the data. Inspired, physicist facturing and other industrial reforms. It the 1840s, Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, Max Planck reluctantly broke with Maxwell’s instituted new public schools and funded William Gladstone and others donated electromagnetic theory and took his first, fellowships to send students abroad to study funds from their own coffers to help found tentative steps towards quantum theory5. advances in science. The central govern- the Royal College of Chemistry, convinced Meanwhile, a different war with Prussia ment brought senior scientists from other that focused research in this field would triggered significant changes in government countries — such as Britain and the United benefit the nation and its imperial ambi- and science to the east, when the Austro- States — to Japan to build up training in tions. By the 1860s, many researchers were Hungarian empire formed in 1867. Very state-funded facilities. Here, too, leaders hard at work formalizing such arrangements. quickly, the imperial authorities launched began to prioritize government-sponsored Construction began on a spate of laboratories epic efforts in meteorology and climatol- research institutions as part of the modern at universities throughout the United King- ogy. The aim was to create extended insti- state-building effort8. dom, each built on the promise that precision tutional networks that might foster a new, measurements of physical quantities could common sense of purpose across the hotch- ENTER THE UNITED STATES advance fundamental scientific understand- potch of local legal, religious and linguistic The United States remained a stubborn out- ing and spur industrial development. traditions. Universities, museums and other lier. The timing was far from promising for Electrification, telegraphy, the expan- government-supported institutions began new investment. The bloodiest conflict in US sion of railways and large-scale production to collect and standardize weather record- history sputtered to an end in 1865, punctu- of steel were the signature developments ings, with a goal of understanding how local ated by the assassination of President Abra- of an era often called the second indus- patterns related to larger-scale phenom- ham Lincoln. (More US soldiers died during trial revolution, which began around 1870. ena. The imperative to unify the far-flung the civil war of 1861–65 than during the Each demanded standard units and meas- empire catalysed cutting-edge research on First and Second World Wars and the wars ures. New synergies emerged as leading such modern-sounding concepts as regional in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq researchers, including James Clerk Maxwell interactions and interdependencies across combined.) Support for scientific research and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), scales from microclimates to continents6. and institutions at the federal level remained plied their understanding of electromagne- By that time, Tsar Alexander II in Russia scarce until the end of the nineteenth cen- tism and thermodynamics as members of was busy pursuing a modernization project tury. Indeed, several leading policymakers high-level government commissions, aim- of his own. Beginning in 1861, he issued were scandalized by the nation’s comparative ing to tackle the challenges of transatlantic a series of proclamations that came to be lack of scientific and technical preparation communications, electrical standards, ocean known as the Great Reforms. Emancipat- during the First World War. navigation and steam power3. ing the serfs was followed quickly by over- Efforts by reformers in the United States In some ways, the British were play- haul of the state-run universities, as well as to shore up government support for research ing catch-up. Since the mid-nineteenth changes to regional governments and the was stymied by the long-standing US tradi- century, local universities throughout the judicial system. The vast bureaucracy that tion that education should remain the prov- German-speaking states had been recruit- was created meant new opportunities for ince of state and local authorities, rather than ing academic talent in contests for pres- ambitious intellectuals, including chem- the federal government. Across the United tige — latter-day Galileos were snatched up ist Dmitrii Mendeleev. After two years of States, individual colleges and universities by government-funded institutions. The study in Heidelberg, Germany, Mendeleev gradually placed greater emphasis on origi- pattern escalated rapidly after the Prussian returned to his native St Petersburg in 1861 nal research and built up infrastructure for defeat of France and the establishment of to teach chemistry at the local university. He laboratories. But the impact remained a unified Germany early in 1871. Under a published his now-famous version of the uneven at best. As late as 1927, when the centralized education ministry, and with periodic table of the elements in 1869, the young physicist Isidor Rabi travelled to even grander ambitions for rapid industri- same year that Nature was launched. Germany to study quantum theory, he found alization, the German government invested The next steps in Mendeleev’s remarkable that university libraries tended to order one 488 | NATURE | VOL 573 | 26 SEPTEMBER 2019©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited.

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