The Medawar 1959 Reith Lectures, ‘The Future of Man’

Soon after I had started ‘A’ levels at school in 1959, the two of us doing zoology were joined at the door of biology block by Jim Key (James John Key 1917-1976) the senior biology master. He had been arguing with Stan Revill (1907-1993), senior history master, and was keen to test his line for further sparring in the staff room. They had both listened to the BBC’s Reith Lectures by P.B. Medawar entitled The Future of Man. That was, of course, before Medawar had become Sir Peter and had been awarded the Nobel Prize. The staff room argument was about whether natural selection in Man, was over (Stan Revill’s stance) or not (Jim Key’s).

Fast forward from 1959 to 2024, I realised that I had never heard these lectures and thus found the one available on the BBC website (here). I also found a copy of the book Medawar published immediately after the lecture series. I think, having read virtually all of Medawar’s later books and having written on his insights in endocrinology, my expectations were too high since I was disappointed both by the lecture (the sixth of the six broadcast on 20 December 1959) and by the book. Was I judging with the benefit of knowledge gained over the past 65 years? Or were his choice of topics,  analogies and explanations not really that good? I strongly suspect that even for his audience on the Third Programme on a Sunday evening, his presentations would have gone over the heads of most.

At the same time as reading Medawar of 1959, I have been reading Venki Ramakrishnan’s Why We Die of 2024. I found myself agreeing with his views on Medawar’s later works:

Unlike many scientists who focus narrowly on one area, Medawar, like Haldane, had widespread interests, and wrote books that were famous for their erudition and elegant writing. Many scientists of my generation grew up reading his Advice to a Young Scientist (1981), which I found pompous, arrogant, thoughtful, engaging, and witty all at once.

The Future of Man can perhaps be described as a series of early essays, in the way of early works by an artist. The best was yet to come. There were though patches of where he put his message over extremely well, as on the genetic consequences of ‘social habit or act of legislation’ and of assortative mating. The book of the lectures is historically important because it deals with topics of human biological and cultural evolution that were being talked about by those in Medawar’s circle in the 1950s. I was therefore surprised to see that my cheap copy was one which had been withdrawn from a British university library. Do such institutions now just throw away important books by important authors away? I fear we are already depriving students the pleasures of browsing in a proper library and then wondering why they are bright but not learned.

…and can you imagine a publisher or the BBC producing anything with that title, or including the word ‘eugenics’ in the text, in 2024?

Medawar PB. 1959. The Future of Man. London: Methuen.