Just on 11 months ago (May 5, 2011) Professor Robert May (Lord May of Oxford, OM, AC, FRS, FAA, former Chief Scientific Advisor to Her Majesty's Government, former President of the Royal Society ) addressed the annual dinner of the Australian Academy of Science. And it was three weeks before that the then Minister for Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology, Senator Kim Carr, announced that the just retired vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Ian Chubb, would take over the Chief Scientist's role for the Australian Government. In announcing the appointment Senator Carr was fulsome in his praise: "We ask for the skills to negotiate the wilds of Canberra and the corridors of academia and the boardrooms of the corporate world. This is no small task (but) the government has found those characteristics united in Professor Ian Chubb."
Turning back to Professor May he told the Australian Academy Fellows:
The only advice I have about having more influence with government is: "You have to be lucky". The things that have happened in Britain are by and large good, not necessarily a reflection on the skills of The Royal Society or others [which] have been just good luck. In the general election of 1993 one of the Labour Party manifestos – which had been influenced by a very interesting eminence grise in the Party, Jeremy Bray – was to...
