The Ratio Club was a small British informal

dining club A dining club (UK) or eating club (US) is a Social club, social group, usually requiring membership (which may, or may not be available only to certain people), which meets for dinners and discussion on a regular basis. They may also often have g ...

from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists,

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

physiologists Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

s and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

s who met to discuss issues in

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

., p. 95.

History

The idea of the club arose from a symposium on animal behaviour held in July 1949 by the Society of Experimental

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. The club was founded by the

neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

John Bates, with other notable members such as W. Ross Ashby. The name ''Ratio'' was suggested by

Albert Uttley Albert Maurel Uttley (14 August, 1906, London - 13 September, 1985 Bexhill) was an English scientist involved in computing, cybernetics, neurophysiology and psychology. He was a member of the Ratio Club and was the person who suggested its name. ...

, it being the Latin root meaning "computation or the faculty of mind which calculates, plans and reasons". He pointed out that it is also the root of ''rationarium'', meaning a statistical account, and ''ratiocinatius'', meaning argumentative. The use was probably inspired by an earlier suggestion by Donald Mackay of the 'MR club', from ''Machina ratiocinatrix'', a term used by

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

in the introduction to his then recently published book '' Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine''. Wiener used the term in reference to ''calculus ratiocinator'', a calculating machine constructed by

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...

. The initial membership was W. Ross Ashby, Horace Barlow, John Bates, George Dawson, Thomas Gold, W. E. Hick, Victor Little, Donald MacKay, Turner McLardy, P. A. Merton, John Pringle, Harold Shipton, Donald Sholl, Eliot Slater,

, W. Grey Walter and John Hugh Westcott.

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

joined after the first meeting with I. J. Good, Philip Woodward and William Rushton added soon after. Giles Brindley was also a member for a short period. The club was the most intellectually powerful and influential cybernetics grouping in the UK, and many of its members went on to become extremely prominent scientists.

References

External links

* * {{Citation , last1 = Husbands , first1 = Phil , author-link = Phil Husbands , last2 = Holland , first2 = Owen , author2-link = Owen Holland (academic) , title = The Ratio Club: A Hub of British Cybernetics , year = 2008 , url = http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/philh/pubs/Ratio2.pdf 1949 establishments in England Scientific organizations established in 1949 Cybernetics Dining clubs History of artificial intelligence Systems sciences organizations