Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) was an English novelist and

physical chemist Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mecha ...

who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the

UK government His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

.''The Columbia Encyclopedia'' (6th Edition, 2001–2005).
Snow, C. P.
Accessed 26 July 2007. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as '' Strangers and Brothers'', and for "

The Two Cultures "The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow, which was published in book form as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'' the same year. Its thesis was that s ...

", a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".

Early life and education

Born in

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area, and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest city in the East Midlands with a popula ...

to William Snow, a church organist and choirmaster, and his wife Ada, Charles Snow was the second of four boys, his brothers being Harold, Eric and Philip Snow, and was educated at Alderman Newton's School. In 1923, he passed the intermediate British School Certificate, but remained at Alderman Newton's to work as a laboratory assistant for a further two years. In 1925 he began a

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

external degree in science at University College, Leicester, graduating with a first in chemistry in 1927 and an MSc the following year. Upon leaving Leicester, Snow gained a prestigious Keddey-Fletcher-Warr postgraduate studentship worth £200, allowing him to embark on doctoral research at

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 250 graduate students. The c ...

. He received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in physics from Cambridge in 1930, with a thesis on the infrared spectra of simple

diatomic molecule Diatomic molecules () are molecules composed of only two atoms, of the same or different chemical elements. If a diatomic molecule consists of two atoms of the same element, such as hydrogen () or oxygen (), then it is said to be homonuclear mol ...

Career and research

In 1930 he became a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of Christ's College. After a ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'' paper on a new method of synthesising

Vitamin A Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin that is an essential nutrient. The term "vitamin A" encompasses a group of chemically related organic compounds that includes retinol, retinyl esters, and several provitamin (precursor) carotenoids, most not ...

turned out to be incorrect, he withdrew from further scientific research. Snow served in several senior civil service positions: as technical director of the Ministry of Labour from 1940 to 1944, and as a civil service commissioner from 1945 to 1960. He was appointed a Commander of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) in the 1943 New Year Honours. Snow was among the 2,300 names of prominent persons listed on the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

s' Special Search List, of those who were to be arrested on the invasion of Great Britain and turned over to the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

. In 1944, he was appointed director of scientific personnel for the English Electric Company. Later he became physicist-director. In this capacity he was to employ his former student Eric Eastwood. In the 1957 New Year Honours he was

knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

, having the honour conferred by Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

on 12 February, and was created a

life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...

, as Baron Snow, of the City of Leicester, on 29 October 1964. As a politician, Snow was parliamentary secretary in the

House of Lords The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...

to the

Minister of Technology The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...

from 1964 to 1966 in the Labour government of

Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx (11 March 1916 – 23 May 1995) was a British statesman and Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1964 to 1970 and again from 197 ...

. Snow married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950; they had one son. Friends included the mathematician

G. H. Hardy Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...

, for whom he would write a biographical foreword in '' A Mathematician's Apology'', the physicist

Patrick Blackett Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (18 November 1897 – 13 July 1974) was an English physicist who received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1925, he was the first person to prove that radioactivity could cause the nuclear tr ...

, the X-ray crystallographer J. D. Bernal, the cultural historian

Jacques Barzun Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-born American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, ...

and the polymath

George Steiner Francis George Steiner, Fellow of the British Academy#Fellowship, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between ...

. At Christ's College he tutored H. S. Hoff – later better known as the novelist William Cooper. The two became friends, worked together in the civil service and wrote versions of each other into their novels: Snow was the model for the college dean, Robert, in Cooper's ''Scenes from Provincial Life'' sequence. In 1960, Snow gave the

Godkin Lectures The Edwin L. Godkin Lecture is an annual lecture hosted by Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The lecture series was founded in 1903 and named in honor of Edwin L. Godkin, the Irish-American jour ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, about the clashes between

Henry Tizard Sir Henry Thomas Tizard (23 August 1885 – 9 October 1959) was an English chemist, inventor and Rector of Imperial College, who developed the modern "octane rating" used to classify petrol, helped develop radar in World War II, and led the fir ...

and F. Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell), both scientific advisors to British governments around the time of the Second World War. The lectures were subsequently published as ''Science and Government.'' For the academic year 1961 to 1962, Snow and his wife both served as Fellows on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

Literary work

Snow's first novel was a

whodunit A ''whodunit'' (less commonly spelled as ''whodunnit''; a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an criminal ...

, ''Death under Sail'' (1932). In 1975 he wrote a biography of

Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope ( ; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among the best-known of his 47 novels are two series of six novels each collectively known as the ''Chronicles of Barsetshire ...

. He is better known as the author of a sequence of novels entitled ''Strangers and Brothers'' in which he depicts intellectuals in modern academic and government settings. The best-known of the sequence is ''The Masters''. It deals with the internal politics of a Cambridge college as it prepares to elect a new master. With the appeal of an insider's view, the novel depicts concerns other than the strictly academic that influence decisions of supposedly objective scholars. ''The Masters'' and ''The New Men'' were jointly awarded the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Un ...

in 1954. ''Corridors of Power'' added a phrase to the language of the day. In 1974, Snow's novel ''In Their Wisdom'' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In ''The Realists'', an examination of the work of eight novelists –

Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, , ), was a French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' ('' The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de Parme'' ('' T ...

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly ; ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is ...

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

Benito Pérez Galdós Benito María de los Dolores Pérez Galdós (; 10 May 1843 – 4 January 1920) was a Spanish Spanish Realist literature, realist novelist. He was a leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Mi ...

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

and

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...

– Snow makes a robust defence of the realistic novel. The storyline of his novel ''The Search'' is referred to in Dorothy L. Sayers's '' Gaudy Night'' and is used to help elicit the criminal's motive.

''The Two Cultures''

On 7 May 1959, Snow delivered a Rede Lecture called ''

'', which provoked "widespread and heated debate". Subsequently, published as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'', the lecture argued that the breakdown of communication between the "two cultures" of modern society – the sciences and the humanities – was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. In particular, Snow argues that the quality of education in the world is on the decline. He wrote: ::A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the

Second Law of Thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on Universal (metaphysics), universal empirical observation concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spont ...

. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's?' ::I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by

mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

, or

acceleration In mechanics, acceleration is the Rate (mathematics), rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Acceleration is one of several components of kinematics, the study of motion. Accelerations are Euclidean vector, vector ...

, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, 'Can you read?' – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

ancestors would have had. The satirists

Flanders and Swann Flanders and Swann were a British comedy duo and musicians. Michael Flanders (1922–1975) was a lyricist, actor, and singer. He collaborated with Donald Swann (1923–1994), a composer and pianist, in writing and performing comedy music, comic ...

used the first part of this quotation as the basis for their short monologue and song, "First and Second Law". As delivered in 1959, Snow's Rede Lectures specifically condemned the British educational system, as having since the Victorian period over-rewarded the humanities (especially

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

) at the expense of

science education Science education is the teaching and learning of science to school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process (the scientific method), some ...

. He believed that in practice this deprived British elites (in politics, administration, and industry) of adequate preparation for managing the modern scientific world. By contrast, Snow said, German and American schools sought to prepare their citizens equally in the sciences and humanities, and better scientific teaching enabled those countries' rulers to compete more effectively in a scientific age. Later discussion of ''The Two Cultures'' tended to obscure Snow's initial focus on differences between British systems (of both schooling and social class) and those of competing countries. Snow was attacked by F. R. Leavis in his Richmond Lecture of 1962 whose subject was "The Two Cultures", something that has come to be referred to as "the two cultures controversy". Although it was seen as a personal attack against Snow, Leavis maintained that he was targeting how public debates worked.

Publications

''Strangers and Brothers'' series

*'' George Passant'' (first published as ''Strangers and Brothers''), 1940 *'' The Light and the Dark'', 1947 *'' Time of Hope'', 1949 *''

The Masters The Masters Tournament (usually referred to as simply the Masters, or as the U.S. Masters outside North America) is one of the four men's major golf championships, men's major championships in Professional golf tours, professional golf. Schedul ...

'', 1951 *'' The New Men'', 1954 *'' Homecomings'', 1956 *'' The Conscience of the Rich'', 1958 *'' The Affair'', 1959 *'' Corridors of Power'', 1964 *'' The Sleep of Reason'', 1968 *'' Last Things'', 1970

Other fiction

*''Death Under Sail'', 1932 *''New Lives for Old'', 1933 *''The Search'', 1934 *''The Malcontents'', 1972 *''In Their Wisdom'', 1974, shortlisted for the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

*''A Coat of Varnish'', 1979

Non-fiction

*'' The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'', 1959 *''Science and Government'', 1961, First Four Square Edition, 1963 *'' The Two Cultures and a Second Look'', 1963 *''Variety of Men: Rutherford; G. H. Hardy;

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

;

Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

;

Lloyd George David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party (United Kingdom), Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leadi ...

; Churchill;

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...

; Dag Hammarskjöld;

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

'', 1967 *''The State of Siege'', 1968 *''Public Affairs'', 1971 *''Trollope: His Life and Art'', 1975 *''The Realists: Portraits of Eight Novelists'', 1978 ( Balzac;

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the great ...

;

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influenti ...

; Galdos;

;

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French language, French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Pas ...

;

Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using pre-reform Russian orthography. ; ), usually referr ...

) *''The Physicists: A Generation that Changed the World'', 1981

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Snow, C. P. 1905 births 1980 deaths 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English novelists Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge Alumni of University of London Worldwide Alumni of the University of Leicester Alumni of the University of London Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English male novelists Snow, C.P. James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Knights Bachelor Labour Party (UK) life peers Life peers created by Elizabeth II People educated at Alderman Newton's School, Leicester Rectors of the University of St Andrews Science and technology in the United Kingdom Scientists from Leicester Wesleyan University faculty Writers from Leicester