PATHWAYS INTO A SCIENTIFIC ELITE: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS, SCHOOLING AND UNIVERSITIES OF FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY BORN FROM 1900

We report on continuing research on the British scientific elite, intended to illustrate a proposed new approach to elite studies, and based on prosopographical data on Fellows of the Royal Society born from 1900. We extend analyses previously reported of Fellows’ social origins and secondary schooling so as to take their university careers into account. The composite term ‘Oxbridge’ is called into question, as Cambridge appears historically to have been far more productive of members of the scientific elite than Oxford. However, Fellows from more advantaged class backgrounds do have a clearly higher probability than others of having attended Cambridge, Oxford or London, rather than universities outside of ‘the golden triangle’ – an outcome only partially mediated through private schooling. The ‘long arm’ of family of origin is thus apparent, although private schooling has been more important in helping Fellows from managerial rather than from professional families to gain entry to an elite university. Family influences on Fellows’ fields of research also remain, even though a further major factor is the universities they attended. A ‘royal road’ into the scientific elite, which Fellows from higher professional and managerial families have the highest probability of having followed, can be identified: that leading from private schooling to both undergraduate and postgraduate study at Cambridge. But the most common pathway, taken by 20% of all Fellows, is that leading from state schooling to undergraduate and graduate study at universities outside of the golden triangle. Fellows from higher professional, but not managerial, families show a distinctively high probability of having avoided this pathway; but it is that most common for Fellows of all less advantaged class origins. The case of the British scientific elite would suggest that detailed and disaggregated analyses of processes of elite formation can show these to be much more diverse than has often been supposed.

THE SOCIAL ORIGINS AND SCHOOLING OF A SCIENTIFIC ELITE: FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY BORN FROM 1900

We present an analysis of the social composition of the UK scientific elite, as represented by Fellows of the Royal Society, in terms of Fellows’ social class origins and type of secondary education. From various sources, we have assembled data for 1691 Fellows, representing 80% of our target population of all Fellows born from 1900 onwards whose scientific careers were spent predominantly in the UK. We find that while these elite scientists come largely from more advantaged class backgrounds, it is professional rather than business or managerial families that are the main source of their recruitment – and, increasingly, such families where a parent is in a STEM occupation. Recruitment from working-class families has declined and for most recent birth cohorts almost ceased. The scientific elite is thus now more homogenous as regards the social origins of its members than it was in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, little change is evident in the secondary schooling of Fellows. In all birth cohorts, between two-fifths and a half of all – and over two-thirds of those from more advantaged class backgrounds – were privately educated, although the proportion attending Clarendon schools would seem low compared with that in other elites. A further finding is that both class origins and type of schooling are associated the relative probabilities of Fellows working in different research fields.

Pragmatic Utterance Effect of the Medical Discourse Subject in Public Education Challenge

The paper actualizes the problem of discourse pragmatics. The authors provide the detailed description of the communicative techniques for enhancing the pragmatic utterance effect of the medical discourse subject in the open communication situation. The study is based on the texts of conference reports and interviews of representatives of the medical and scientific elite who have addressed the topic of a new coronavirus infection pandemic in 2020-2021 and those are solving the task of the public education in the area. Based on this analysis the authors provide a system of speech tactics that ensure the solution of this problem, and linguistic techniques for their implementation, which together form the pragmatic effect of the statements of the subject of medical discourse.

Born to do science? A case study of family factors in the academic lives of the Chinese scientific elite

Primarily based on data collected by the Project for Collecting Historic Data of Scientists’ Academic Life, this paper sets out to analyse the cultural and social role of family factors in the academic lives of three prominent scientists: He Zehui, Wang Shouwu and Wang Shoujue. It was found that, while providing economic support, in the cultural dimension, their family conveyed the idea of saving the nation through science and industry, offered guidance on research career planning and cultivated the concept of feminism; in the social dimension, the three scientists clearly benefited from the academic power and social networks of their family members. This case study of a Chinese scientific family reveals an integration between Western scientific culture and Chinese family culture, and extracts some family factors that have great influence on the academic lives of the scientific elite.