November 30, 2014

A new exhibition ‘Churchill’s Scientists’ at the Science Museum shows just how important Churchill was to British science
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor

The Telegraph—29 November 2014. Winston Churchill is arguably Britain’s greatest war time Prime Minister, one of the most celebrated orators of the 20th century, and a respected author, who even won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

But few people realise how different the world might have been had it not been for Churchill’s love affair with science.

A new exhibition at London’s Science Museum will show just how much modern Britain owes to his tireless championing of innovation, technology and discovery.

Without Churchill the country may never had moved to modern warfare which helped win both World Wars, including the use of tanks and radar.

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He fostered an environment where the brightest scientists in the country could build ground-breaking machines, such as the Bernard Lovell telescope, and make world-changing discoveries, in molecular genetics, radio astronomy, nuclear power, nerve and brain function and robotics.

Churchill was the first Prime Minister to insist on a scientific advisor, and under his leadership, scientists were given unprecedented access to the government and funding.

“Which other Prime Minister had a scientist continually at his elbow?” said Andrew Nahum, lead curator of Churchill’s Scientists.

©The Telegraph