Scare given short shrift by knight of the scientific realm
Rachel Campbell-Johnston meets Sir Robert May
The Times
February 20, 1999
THE Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government defies
easy stereotypes. Whitehall mandarins are meant to be dull
and dispassionate, scientists introverted and
incomprehensible. Sir Robert May is outspoken, informal
and enthusiastic.
Sir Robert, 63, may have stayed backstage after he took up
his role in 1995, but such diffidence has nothing to do with
timidity. Last Monday, on Radio 4's Today programme, he
responded to scaremongering over a genetically modified
potato that had harmed laboratory rats by declaring: "If you
mix cyanide with vermouth in a cocktail and find that it is
not good for you, I don't draw sweeping conclusions that
you should ban all mixed drinks." His delivery captured the
public's imagination.
All week, journalists have been trying to get through on Sir
Robert's telephone, thrilled to have unearthed the scientist
who whispers in the Prime Minister's ear. He has resisted
demands for an encore. "It's better that the whole
community's voice should be heard," he explains. So why
did he agree to this interview? "I see no harm in people
having a sense of who I am . . . Actually, it would be quite
helpful if some members of Government found out who I
was."
For this Australian-born scientist, stuffy formalities are
there to be turned on their head. A knighthood is an
"extremely useful thing to whack in front of your name".
He is shuttling back and forth across his office, a slight,
restless, man, hands flying to his professorial hair. He is
exasperated by a Daily Mail front-page that shouts: "GM
foods: How Blair ignored our top scientists". It was a
"grotesque misrepresentation", he explains for my purposes.
But despite anxious interventions by his staff, he lets me
overhear less politely put opinions offered over the
telephone.
He thinks the present debate about GM foods doesn't
benefit anyone except the press. "Why suddenly discuss it
now? The origins of gene cutting were in the 1970s - I had
a big part in it. It has been blown up by the papers now in
large part because of BSE."
The telephone rings yet again - "Yeah, you bet, you bet. . .
like a bunch of bloody children," he tells the caller - and
returns to the interview with a cheery clap of his hands.
"Good, now I'll sit down and calm down." And suddenly his
charm and intellect are sharply focused.
A few days ago, he tells me, he had been sitting around a
table with the Prime Minister and a young woman from the
policy unit, and was impressed that the discussion was
simply a conversation between equals. Yet he pounces,
instinctively one suspects, on lazy reasoning.
I am treated to unfaltering disquisitions on anything from
theories of superconductivity (he assumes that I am familiar
with that) to poodles (he once had a pet one, dearly
beloved); from Fermat's Last Theorem (which he explained
to the Queen - "Don't worry, there won't be a quiz," he
reassured her), through religion ("I was brought up
Presbyterian but underwent an inverse epiphany at 13, and
now I'm irreligious") to opals (two serve as his cufflinks -
and there are three types, you know . . .).
He speaks candidly of a childhood of "genteel poverty" in a
suburb of Sydney, of how his mother divorced his father
because he was an alcoholic, and how he, as an asthmatic,
amused himself with mental puzzles and games of chess.
One day "something went snap" and he realised he was in a
different league from his schoolmates. "I had an
extraordinary undergraduate career," at Sydney University,
he tells me. "I topped every class for every subject."
The statement appears neither arrogant nor naive, more a
simple recognition of fact. Sir Robert may joke that the
cleverest thing he ever did was to marry Judith - they met
on a blind double date - but he well knows that his intellect
has earned him a remarkably varied and influential career.
He has been a theoretical physicist in Sydney and a
professor of biology at Princeton. He has used his
mathematical abilities to predict population changes among
animals, insects and viruses - and despite vociferous
criticism at the time, accurately forecast the effects of HIV
in Africa. He is also known for applying chaos theory to
biology, and subsequently explained the concept to Tom
Stoppard who wove it into his play Arcadia.
So what makes a great scientist? "Well, when I was an
undergraduate," he says, "I swotted like mad when it came
to exams, but otherwise I was more interested in snooker
and inventing funny forms of chess with my friends. I
realised that a researcher is essentially playing games
against nature, playing games with nature, where the nature
of the game is to work out what the rules are. I think that's
a good description of what motivates many scientists: the
sheer pleasure of the chase."
Science is so strong in Britain, Sir Robert believes, because
of the unhierarchical way it is practised. "British science is
infested with the irreverent young," he says.
"Anyone who thinks their life will be successful just
because they are bright is deluded. It's chance and
necessity that shape a career." His own career was partly
patterned by accident: the sudden death of his supervisor
led him to leave for America; he stumbled into ecology
after picking up a book on the subject.
But this happy-go-lucky attitude appears to be founded on a
bedrock of ambition - a driving desire for recognition. Sir
Robert takes pains to explain that his knighthood did not
simply come with the job, and that the most notable among
his many awards, the 1996 Crafoord Prize, is equivalent to
a Nobel - but because it is named after the family who
endowed it, lacks the resonance. "I feel quite irritated," he
says, teasingly adding: "When I was asked at the ceremony
what I was going to do with the money I told them I was
going to buy a flat in Chelsea. 'What a change from the
sanctimonious answers I usually get,' the woman said."
He lives in that flat during the week, and at the weekend
returns to his Oxford home, where he relaxes by jogging,
playing Real tennis ("a silly bugger's game), and reading -
anything from "detective rubbish" to bridge problems. "I'm
not a self-reflective person - I like doing things."
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