The Oxford University Scientific Society (OUSS) is a student scientific society at the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1882 as the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club. It is one of the oldest undergraduate science societies in the world. It organizes talks on scientific subjects on a weekly basis. Former speakers include Nobel prize laureates (

John E. Walker Sir John Ernest Walker One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 7 January 1941) is a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. Walker is Emeritus Director an ...

Peter Mansfield Sir Peter Mansfield (9 October 1933 – 8 February 2017) was an English physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Paul Lauterbur, for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Mansfie ...

Peter J. Ratcliffe Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci (born 14 May 1954) is a British Nobel Laureate physician-scientist who is trained as a nephrologist. He was a practising clinician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Nuffield Professor of Clinical ...

) and other well-known scientists ( Roger Penrose,

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

). OUSS also organizes visits to places of scientific interest, which have included tours of the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second ...

Museum of the History of Science The History of Science Museum in Broad Street, Oxford, England, holds a leading collection of scientific instruments from Middle Ages to the 19th century. The museum building is also known as the Old Ashmolean Building to distinguish it from t ...

, TOAD distillery in Oxford, the Joint European Torus project, and the National Space Centre in Leicester. In April 2012 they held a large-scale

debate Debate is a process that involves formal discourse on a particular topic, often including a moderator and audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for often opposing viewpoints. Debates have historically occurred in public meetings, a ...

gerontology Gerontology ( ) is the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903, from the Greek , ''geron'', "old man" and , ''-logia'', "study of". The fiel ...

at the Sheldonian Theatre between

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of ''Ending Aging'' (2007). He is known ...

and

Colin Blakemore Sir Colin Blakemore, , Hon (1 June 1944 – 27 June 2022) was a British neurobiologist, specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was Yeung Kin Man Professor of Neuroscience and senior fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Adva ...

, chaired by Sir Richard Peto.

History

Oxford University increased its provision for science in the second half of 19th century, with the first scientific degree awarded in 1850. A number of scientific ventures were undertaken, including the building of the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Clarendon Lab, and the proportion of undergraduates doing a scientific degree increased every year. Oxford University Junior Scientific Club was founded in November 1882. At that time there were around 25 students admitted to a scientific course every year (they accounted for 7% of the student body) and most of them soon joined the newly formed society. Edward Poulton and Halford Mackinder were among its founders. The Club aimed to "bring together undergraduate and bachelor of arts members of the University for the discussion of scientific matters". After one year four fifths of students doing studying science were members of the club, and it also attracted members studying non-scientific disciplines. Graduates often stayed connected with the club after leaving the university. In 1889 it had 102 members, and in 1894, around 200, and this number stayed approximately the same until the First World War. During first 30 years of its existence the club served as a platform to integrate science undergraduates as well as recent graduates and allowed them to present their original research. Although the society invited senior university members and distinguished academics to speak during so-called "special meetings", its main events were the fortnightly "ordinary meetings", in which papers about recent developments in science or about original research were read. Originally around half of those papers were read by current undergraduates, although it changed with time in favour of the graduate speakers. With no research degrees in Oxford, the ordinary meetings were one of the few opportunities for graduates to arouse interest about their scientific work. Famous students involved in those early years of the Junior Scientific Club include

Nevil Sidgwick Nevil Vincent Sidgwick FRS (8 May 1873 – 15 March 1952) was an English theoretical chemist who made significant contributions to the theory of valency and chemical bonding. Biography Sidgwick was born in Park Town, Oxford, the elder of two ...

Frederick Soddy Frederick Soddy FRS (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also prove ...

, Henry Moseley and

Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...

. Special meetings with distinguished academics developed into an annual series of "Boyle Lectures", endowed and published from the society's subscription. Among the people who delivered those lectures were

William Ramsay Sir William Ramsay (; 2 October 1852 – 23 July 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements ...

, Lord Kelvin and Henry Acland. Some of those lectures have been subsequently made into books. Once every two years the Club organized science festivals, called "

conversazione A ''conversazione'' is a "social gathering redominantlyheld by learned or art society" for conversation and discussion, especially about the arts, literature, medicine, and science. ::It would not be easy to devise a happier way han the ''con ...

s", in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Conversaziones comprised popular-level lectures and exhibitions in Pitt Rivers. They attracted around 1000 people from around Oxford. One of such conversaziones was described in the journal

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

from 6 July 1936. The club published its own journal, the ''Journal of the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club''. It was edited every term from 1887 to 1912 and also after the First World War. Its style and composition were similar to other contemporary science periodicals, with some numbers containing as many as 100 pages. The articles were devoted to the papers read at the society's meetings or to general scientific developments. The journal also contained notes about current and former members of the club. In 1897 it was renamed ''Transactions of the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club''. By the beginning of the 20th century some specialized scientific societies were set up in Oxford and they were better suited for presenting undergraduate's research work. The quality of postgraduate teaching also improved. Those changes brought forth a shift in the activities of the Junior Scientific Club in 1920s. It concentrated mainly on inviting high-profile scientific speakers. This has remained the society's activity up to the present day. The society's archives are largely available in the

People

The Senior Member is Professor

Kay Davies Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (''née'' Partridge; born 1 April 1951) is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the Universi ...

, FRS (Genetics). The following are patrons: *

Peter Atkins Peter William Atkins (born 10 August 1940) is an English chemist and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. He retired in 2007. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including ''Physical Chemistry'', ''I ...

(Chemistry) *

(Physiology) *

Marcus du Sautoy Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and pop ...

(Mathematics) * Sir Roger Penrose (Mathematics)

References

The 'History' section is largely based on the article: *

External links

Oxford University Scientific Society website
{{authority control Student organizations established in 1882 Scientific Society Scientific societies based in the United Kingdom