Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and one of the greatest educators England has had, was violently opposed to research as a university ideal.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946),1 the Anglo-American author, in his biography suggests that his ability to elicit Jowett's knee jerk, as depicted in the quotation below, may have played a significant role in bringing science to Oxford.
The word ‘research’ as a university ideal had, indeed, been ominously spoken in Oxford ... some years ago; but the notion of this ideal, threatening as it did to discredit the whole tutorial and examinational system which was making Oxford into the highest of high schools for boys, was received there with anger and contempt. In Balliol, the birthplace and most illustrious home of this great system, it was regarded with special scorn .... The ideal of endowment for research was particularly shocking to Benjamin Jowett, the great inventor of the tutorial system which it threatened. I remember once ... inadvertently pronouncing the ill-omened word. ‘Research!’ the Master exclaimed. ‘Research!’ he said. ‘A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.’ At this sweeping statement I protested; whereupon I was peremptorily told, if I know any such results of value, to name them without delay .... The only thing that came into my head was the recent discovery, of which I had read somewhere, that on striking a patient's kneecap sharply he would give called, a judgement could be formed of his general state of health.
Dr. Edward Hartley Angle, the founder of modern orthodontics – part II
