by Susan Sheets-Pyenson
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Bronowski, Jacob (1908-1974), mathematician, poet, and humanist, was born on 18 January 1908 in ?ódz«, Poland, the first of the three children of Abram Bronowski, haberdasher, and his wife, Celia Flatto. During the First World War the family lived in Germany, and in 1920 they moved to England. Bronowski subsequently attended the Central Foundation School in London and Jesus College, Cambridge. He studied mathematics at Cambridge, achieving a first class in part one of the mathematical tripos (1928), becoming a wrangler in part two (1930), and earning a doctorate in 1933 (the same year he became a naturalized British subject). Besides his work in algebraic geometry, topology, statistics, and mathematical aspects of biology, Bronowski's intellectual interests already had expanded to include philosophy and literature, particularly poetry. This led to his first major work, The Poet's Defence (1939), in which he wrestled with the relationship between the truth of poetry and that of science. It marked the real beginning of his attempts to 'create a philosophy for the twentieth century which [is] ... all of one piece' (Bronowski, 15). He continued to develop this theme in his study of the poetry of William Blake, published in 1944. His friendship with poets Laura Riding and Robert Graves induced Bronowski to try his own hand at poetry, a practice he continued throughout his life. He published little of his poetry, but each year his Christmas card to friends and family featured one of his pieces.
Bronowski left Cambridge in 1934 to take up a lectureship at the University College of Hull. In 1941 he married Rita Coblentz, the sculptor Rita Colin; they later had four daughters. By 1942 Bronowski was recruited to the war effort, in his case pioneering the field of operational research methods. As scientific deputy to the British joint chiefs of staff mission to Japan in 1945 he applied these methods to write a report, Effects of the Atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He extended this approach to government research on industrial problems, becoming director of the coal research establishment of the National Coal Board of Great Britain in 1950. From 1959 to 1963 Bronowski served as director-general of process development, when he elaborated his research into smokeless fuel. During this time he acted as a consultant to UNESCO (1948) in Paris and as Carnegie visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1953). Especially significant to his future work in popularizing science, Bronowski began to work as a commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation. There (particularly in a series called The Brains Trust) he displayed remarkable talent for explaining and conveying scientific concepts to a lay audience.
To chronicle Bronowski's posts and achievements, however, scarcely captures the eclectic intellectual interests that powered his most enduring contributions. Bronowski saw art and science, the 'two cultures', as 'twin expressions of the human imagination' (Wren, 91). During his Cambridge years he had sought to understand literature as a form of universal knowledge. Bronowski gradually turned from poetry to science as revelatory of imagination, 'a shift of emphasis rather than a shift of position' (ibid.). It was perhaps his wrestling with the betrayal of human values exemplified by the holocaust and the atomic bombing of Japan that caused Bronowski to reverse his earlier views about the value-transcendent quality of imaginative thought.
The last twenty years of Bronowski's life were dedicated to developing the theme of the humanistic dimensions of science. In his Science and Human Values of 1956 (derived from his lectures at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953), Bronowski argued that civilization's failures were associated with an arrogant faith in the panacea of value free science unshaped by its social environment. Only an ethical code built on 'truth, trust and freedom to dissent' (Wren, 92) permitted the scientific imagination to flourish. Contemporaries have identified this work as initiating the two cultures debate, and C. P. Snow himself acknowledges Bronowski's contributions in The Two Cultures: and a Second Look (1963).
In 1964 Bronowski emigrated to the United States to become senior fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, and later director of its council for biology in human affairs (1970). There he researched the topic of human specificity, which he understood as the attempt to define the unique biological and behavioural characteristics of the human species. This work, which emphasized the special role of imagination for explaining human nature, served as the basis for the thirteen-part BBC television series The Ascent of Man (1973). The series was broadly intended by the BBC to present the development of science to a lay audience in much the way that Kenneth Clark's Civilisation had done for art. Written in July 1969, the shooting of the series took over two years to complete and led to Bronowski's visiting some thirty countries. First broadcast in 1973, it enthralled many from academic and non-academic backgrounds alike, and won Bronowski the Royal Television Society's silver medal for outstanding creative achievement.
Honours and distinctions recognized Bronowksi's contributions to the humanities and science. He was an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge (1967), a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960), and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He delivered a number of distinguished lectures, including the Silliman lectures at Yale University (1967), the Bampton lectures at Columbia (1969), and the Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. His own words best sum up the unity of purpose behind his undertakings:
SUSAN SHEETS-PYENSON
Sources
DNB
D. Wren, 'Bronowski, Jacob', Thinkers of the twentieth century: a biographical, bibliographical and critical dictionary, ed. E. Devine (1983), 96-7
The Times (23 Aug 1974)
The Times (11 Sept 1974)
New York Times (23 Aug 1974)
'Bronowski, Jacob', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2 (1989)
University of Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Bronowski MSS
WWW
J. Bronowski, The ascent of man (1973)
Archives
University of Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, literary MSS and papers | Rice University, Houston, Texas, Woodson Research Center, corresp. with Sir Julian Huxley
Likenesses
photograph, NPG [see illus.]
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