Penguin’s New Biology in 1952 contained a war of words between former and possibly continuing friends. For those of us encouraged as schoolboys* to read past volumes for ‘A’ levels and especially the old ’S’ or Scholarship level, the mutual slagging off by two eminent scientists was a useful introduction to the cut-throat world of research and scholarship.
The spat started with a review of a book written by John Desmond Bernal FRS (1901-1971) the ‘Sage of Science’ on the origins of life. Norman Wingate (‘Bill’) Pirie FRS (1907-1997) was the reviewer. After seven excoriating pages, headed ‘Vital Blarney’ he ended:
This little book, therefore, is unsatisfactory. It has been compared to Schrodinger’s book What is Life, but it is not as bad as that; it is at least, for the most part, about its sensible subject and Professor Bernal knows something of the matter. But he does not know enough to contribute usefully. This criticism may be looked on as simple example of he old injunction to stick to his last. To some extent it is. But such an injunction would not unreasonably restrict Professor Bernal. He would need as many arms at Briareus to attend adequately to all the lasts he is qualified to do some banging on. There are so many subject—crystallography, politics, building, bomb-damage, ethics, history, etc.—on which he writes authoritatively and convincingly that we must put down to pure Irish whimsy his decision to write a book on life. So much already has already been written on the subject that impatience is justified at a contribution made up so largely of blarney.
In the next issue, Bernal wrote a defence under the title ‘Keep off the Grass’. It began:
One of these days I will see a review by N. W. Pirie of a scientific work of which he thoroughly approves. It will no doubt be a study by an expert in the field which explores, very precisely and with every reasonable precaution, a circumscribed subject and expresses the results in an orderly way with due allowance for any possible foreseen or unforeseen error. It will certainly never be anything I write. To be criticized by Pirie therefore does not surprise me and is no mark of distinction. However, in his delight in castigating the impudence of anyone—not even a biochemist—who pretends to knowledge about the origin of something that does not exist, he has allowed himself to express opinions of his own of an extravagance of scepticism that far exceeds anything he charges against me, and it is these rather than his criticisms of my efforts that require to be answered. The burden of Pirie’s review was that firstly I had said nothing new, or even nearly new, for what I had said had been better said fifty to a hundred years ago, further, that insofar as I had said anything else it was unproven or wrong, and lastly, that not being a professional biochemist I had no right to say anything at all on the subject.
and ended:
Pirie chides me for knowing too little of our ignorance. I would wish him in return not to ignore so much of our knowledge.
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| Bernal (left) and Pirie from their respective Biographical Memoirs |
The whole history of Bernal’s interest in the origin of life or, perhaps, more accurately, the origin of organic compounds found in living organisms, and the background to this then famous spat have been explained by Andrew Brown in his biography of Bernal. The latter’s book arose from a lecture he gave. Pirie then wrote a criticism of the lecture and sent it to Bernal who incorporated it as an appendix to the book without checking with Pirie that he had no objection to its publication. But Pirie did object. Pirie was a stickler on the correct use of English and was concerned that he had written the criticism in a hurry, possibly while ‘tight’, and may have committed solecisms he condemned in others, the ‘others’ including Bernal!
Bernal wrote a not-so-grovelling apology in a letter to ‘Dear Bill’:
It never occurred to me that you were tight, or, even if you were, you could ever have forgotten yourself so far as not to express yourself in perfect English!…I should have asked you and I am very sorry now that I did not because you might have produced longer and even more controversial comments.
Pirie’s revenge was the review of the book.
Pirie NW. 1952. Vital Blarney (Review by N.W. Pirie of The Physical Basis of Life. J.D. Bernal. 80 pp, 1951. Routledge and Kegan Paul. 6s). New Biology 12, 106-112.
Bernal JD. 1952. Keep off the grass. A review of a review. New Biology 13, 120-126.
Brown A. 2005. J.D. Bernal. The Sage of Science. Oxford University Press.
Hodgkin DMC. 1980. John Desmond Bernal 10 May 1901-16 September 1971. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 26, 17-84.
Pierpoint WS. 1999. Norman Wingate Pirie. 1 July 1907-29 March 1997. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 45, 397-415.
*When did the use of ‘student’ creep into use as a term for school pupils?
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