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JG Crowther Papers

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Collection Description

The Archive contains substantial record of Crowther’s long career in journalism, including his work for Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist and, in particular, the Manchester Guardian where he was the regular science correspondent, a position for which there was no precedent at the time. The position allowed Crowther to become acquainted with leading scientific figures in the 1930s. Topics covered range from the technology of ‘talkies’ to science in Czechoslovakia. Scientific breakthroughs in television and atomic weapons are covered in an accessible but authoritative way. Crowther’s politics tended to surface only his articles on Russia (his four-part ‘Science in Soviet Russia’ appeared in 1929), but his papers also demonstrate the subtle political nature of the editing process which Crowther viewed as compromising the scientist’s supposed objectivity. Daily journalism was only one of Crowther’s many activities, however, and he produced a rapid sequence of books, including An Outline of the Universe (1931) and The ABC of Chemistry (1932) he communicated momentous discoveries in the physical sciences to a wide readership, while The Social Relations of Science (1941) occupies a genuine niche position in the ‘science and society’ literature of the 1930s and 1940s. The Crowther Archive contains correspondence, research, notes and drafts relating to 40 different titles, together with an associated collection of many of the books themselves.
Crowther’s enthusiasm for Stalin’s policy towards science fed his own ideological view of the scientist’s role in society. He visited the USSR several times in the 1930s and the Archive contains valuable and detailed accounts of Soviet research institutes of the time.


Despite a steep political leaning towards the left, Crowther was a true internationalist at heart and forged links with French Communist scientists like Frederic and Irène Joliot-Curie which led to a role in the creation of the Anglo-French Society of Scientists in 1940. He also maintained connections to European intelligentsia, including prime movers in the Bauhaus movement such as architect Walter Gropius and painter László Moholy-Nagy. Correspondence with these figures is included in the Archive.

In 1940, Crowther forged links with Mass-Observation’s Tom Harrisson (see the Mass-Observation Archive) to investigate the public’s perception of science. Crowther was concerned that the caricatured ‘mad scientists’ populating pulp novels and low-budget films left the public with a preconceived view of scientists as essentially. The Crowther Archive and the ‘Science’ topic files in the Mass-Observation Archive document Crowther’s and Harrisson’s efforts to promote science in a more positive light.

At the outbreak of war Crowther was appointed the first director of the Science Department of the British Council and the Archive records its important role in shaping the international cultural body which ultimately became Unesco. The Crowther Archive is an invaluable source of official material for those investigating Unesco’s origins and workings. It also records two other significant wartime endeavours which came out of Crowther’s time at the British Council. The first was the establishment of a Cultural Scientific Office in Chungking headed by Crowther’s associate, Joseph Needham, who did much to challenge the Western perception of the Chinese as ‘mystical’ people who knew nothing. The second product of Crowther’s directorship was the Society for Visiting Scientists, which aided imperilled or vulnerable scientists in Europe such as those endangered by the rise of Nazism. The Archive includes Crowther’s detailed notes on the history of the Science Department itself.

Making friends in high places and enemies on both the left and right, the correspondence housed in the Archive is often as revealing as Crowther’s published works. Correspondents include historian and literary critic AL Rowse, geneticist and statistician Lancelot Hogben, language reformer CK Ogden and Communist Party founder Ralph Fox. His correspondents frequently attached related lecture notes, pamphlets and press-cuttings to their letters and these are housed alongside.

Archival history

The Crowther Archive was acquired in the early days of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the 小蓝视频, when Roy MacLeod, Research Fellow at SPRU (later Reader in History and Social Studies of Science) was building the new discipline of the ‘social studies of science’ and seeking to give 小蓝视频 a leading role in it. MacLeod then taught courses that included material on the history of science writing and science journalism.

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