APPENDIX 16
Memorandum submitted by Professor Charles
M Goldie, University of Sussex
My contention is that the Royal Society, which
has long had few Fellows from the mathematical sciences, has in
recent years drifted into almost total neglect of the area within
it that I know and belong to, statistics and probability. That
is, the self-replicating nature of the Fellowship has been allowed
to drift into a state where the natural tendency of Fellows to
favour their own fields has led to a serious distortion and imbalance.
This may be an instability that has led to other
fields being similarly neglected or, conversely, over-represented;
I wouldn't know. But I hope that lack of similar complaints from
other branches of mathematics, or science generally, will not
cause you to discount this letter. You are hardly likely to hear
from over-represented areas. From within any similarly under-represented
scientific fields there are very great obstacles against the making
of such a complaint. Those who have the standing to do so are
likely either to have been elected Fellows themselves, and thereby
naturally tend to feel that all must be well, or to be in contention
for Fellowship, when their views would tend to be discounted by
their being considered interested parties, and in any case they
would certainly not express them for fear of damaging their chances.
My own position is that I am not a contender for Fellowship, but
I have researched and taught in my own field since graduating
from Imperial College in 1964, and occupy a central and senior
enough position to be able to speak with confidence. Furthermore,
towards the end of this letter I shall list evidence that supports
my claim.
Insofar as the Royal Society is now partial
and discriminatory in its coverage of science it is clearly not
fit to be a conduit for public funds of the sort it has become.
However, I want to add straight away that I fully accept that
only the Royal Society can address and act on any problems concerning
its own membership. No other body can or should tell it what to
do. My hope is that your enquiry will lead to it recognising that
it has a problem concerning the subject balance of its membership,
and that the Fellows will be moved to correct it.
I write to you as Chair of HoDoMS (Heads of
Departments of Mathematical Sciences in the UK) because the dearth
of Royal Society Fellows has significant adverse consequences
for my member university departments. Those departments cover
pure and applied mathematics, statistics and operational research,
and we extend throughout the UK including Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland. Although there has not been time for me to consult
my members I am confident they will back me up in my contention
of a general lack of Royal Society Fellows in our field, and of
specific neglect of my own area once they see the evidence. The
main adverse consequence is a major contribution to the general
invisibility and lack of "clout" that afflicts mathematical
departments for a number of reasons, and a resulting failure to
win resources. When Vice-Chancellors have major decisions to make
concerning science they look for outside advice, and whom do they
seek it of? FRSs, naturally, as those are the individuals who
have the badge of authority that they can rely on. There are currently
numbers of smaller mathematics/statistics departments in danger
from the disaster that affected AS Level Maths last summer—see
Lucy Hodges's article "What does a decline in maths really
add up to?" in the Independent of 7 March—and
Vice-Chancellors feel free to lay about them against a field that
to them seems to have few world-class figures to raise opposition.
The evidence that I promised consists of a complete
list of the FRSs in my own area, statistics and probability, considered
in relation to the size and strength of that area. Here is the
list, of those still living, by date of election. It involves
my own judgement of whom to include, but I had no difficulties
of demarcation and am confident that any senior colleague would
back up my choices of inclusion and exclusion in virtually every
case.
1955 | D J Finney
|
| 1964 | D G Kendall |
| 1966 | Sir Richard Doll |
| 1967 | C. R Rao* |
| 1971 | Sr John Kingman |
| 1973 | Sir David Cox |
| 1974 | Sir Walter Bodmer |
| 1976 | J M Hammersley |
| 1978 | P Whittle |
| 1981 | J A Nelder |
| 1984 | D Williams |
| 1985 | G E P Box** |
| 1989 | F P Kelly, Sir Richard Peto
|
| 1994 | D J Aldous**, P. McCullagh**
|
| 1997 | B W Silverman |
| 1998 | S R S Varadhan* |
| 2000 | W Ewens*, P G Hall* |
| 2001 | A F M Smith |
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* Commonwealth citizen, employed abroad
** British citizen, settled in USA
You will see from the table that there have been only two
individuals in this country elected in the 12 years 1990-01 inclusive.
What is the size of the field in this country? Those towards the
statistical end are likely to belong to the Royal Statistical
Society while those more in probability (there is a continuum
of interests in between) will usually join the London Mathematical
Society (a national society despite its name), and many, like
me, are in both. The RSS has 7,200 members, perhaps two-thirds
in this country, and virtually all of those are in the subject
area that I have used to construct the above table. The LMS has
1,500 members in the UK, of whom only a hundred or two work in
probability/statistics and are not also in the RSS. At a very
rough guess one arrives at about 5,000 individuals in my field
in the UK. The table shows that this population gives rise to
14 FRSs in this country. That is surely a low proportion, but
the really telling figures come from extrapolating the recent
rate of election from the field. Assuming continuance of the two-every-twelve-years
rate of election, and assuming, generously, that newly elected
Fellows live for 36 years after election, one arrives at a steady-state
total of six FRSs in this country from probability and statistics,
a field of perhaps 5,000 scientists. This is catastrophically
few. The Institute of Physics has 30,000 members, perhaps 20,000
in this country. It is inconceivable that physics could have only
24 FRSs in the UK. The Royal Society, which has 1,216 Fellows,
would be an order of magnitude smaller.
All those listed in the above table are male, by the way.
The problem of its Fellowship being overwhelmingly male is one
that the Royal Society recognises, but the field of statistics
and probability shows up as a signal instance of the imbalance:
to my knowledge it has not ever had a female FRS.
Could the Royal Society's neglect of my field be explained
by the field being moribund, no longer producing good new science?
No: there is simply no way that any such claim could be maintained.
In last year's Research Assessment Exercise the panel for Unit
of Assessment 24 (Statistics and Operational Research), under
which most researchers would fall, awarded the highest average
grade of the three mathematical panels. A small proportion of
the relevant individuals will have been assessed under Pure Mathematics
(Unit of Assessment 22), but the average grade under that panel
was again high. All panels used overseas experts. Overall improvement
in research in the mathematical sciences has led the relevant
research council, the EPSRC, radically to expand the funding allocated
to its Mathematics Programme, within which my area wins its proportionate
share in the general competition.
Another indication of health and vigour is that both learned
societies, the Royal Statistical Society and the London Mathematical
Society, have recently expanded into new, impressive, central
premises, and the energy, confidence and breadth of their activities
is plain for all to see.
I have made my case but I ought to reconcile what might seem
my contradictory statements that certain maths/statistics departments
are under threat, and yet research in the area is extremely healthy.
There is no contradiction, because it is the smallest and most
marginal departments that tend to face difficulties, and they
do not have a substantial research presence. Concentration may
be in progress, but that is a whole other topic. Concerning it,
let me just remark that when Stephen Timms, Minister of State
in the DfES, came at my invitation to address the HoDoMS Annual
Conference last week, he told us that the country needs 40 per
cent of maths/statistics graduating cohorts for the next few years
to enter school-teaching. This ambitious target cannot be delivered
by the grander research-intensive departments alone. It needs
universities and HE Colleges with local catchment areas to continue
to contribute, up and down the country. Concentration will render
the delivery of an adequate supply of trained manpower impossible.
April 2002
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