The Humanist, scientist and broadcaster Jacob Bronowski was honoured today with a blue plaque in Hull, the city where he once taught. The unveiling of the plaque follows a campaign by the Hull and East Riding Humanist Group to celebrate Dr Bronowski’s achievements.
Dr Bronowski is most well known for presenting the 1973 BBC TV series The Ascent of Man. Born in Poland in 1908 to Jewish parents, his family moved to Germany during the First World War, and then to England in 1920. His intellectual interests ranged widely, straddling the divide between the science and the humanities. He was also a committed Humanist. In October 1968 he wrote:
The notion that a man shall judge for himself what he is told, sifting the evidence and weighing the conclusions, is of course implicit in the outlook of science. But it begins before that as a positive and active constituent of humanism. For evidently the notion implies not only that man is free to judge, but that he is able to judge. This is an assertion of confidence which goes back to a contemporary of Socrates, and claims (as Plato quotes him) that ‘man is the measure of all things’. In humanism, man is all things: he is both the expression and the master of the creation.
The campaign for a blue plaque began after diaries discovered by his daughter, the academic and broadcaster Professor Lisa Jardine, showed that he had lived in Hull. The blue plaque was unveiled at 29 Hallgate in Cottingham, where Dr Bronowski lived between 1934 and 1942, when he was a lecturer at the University of Hull.
Dr Bronowski, died in August 1974 at the age of 72. He inspired figures such as Carl Sagan, who went on to make the TV series Cosmos, and David Attenborough.
Tim Stephenson, secretary of the Hull and East Riding Humanist Group, said that Dr Bronowski was ‘a real Renaissance man’. ‘He’s known as a mathematician and a scientist who was interested in physics and biology, but he was also a poet. He was a multi-faceted person who was involved in the broad area between the arts, the sciences and the social sciences. He was a really interesting character.’
BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson, who was present at the unveiling of the plaque, commented ‘Jacob Bronowski was a great humanist. He was one of the main contributors to the development of humanist thought in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. This work of his is less well-known now than his pioneering work in science communication but just as worth celebrating as the fruits of a brilliant life.’
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For further comment or information contact Pavan Dhaliwal, Head of Public Affairs at pavan@humanists.uk or on 0773 843 5059.
The Hull and East Riding Humanist Group news article about the unveiling of the blue plaque: http://hull-and-east-riding.humanist.org.uk/?p=459
BBC News article about the blue plaque unveiling: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-20114724
Humanist Hero – Jacob Bronowski by Tim Stephenson: http://www.humanistlife.org.uk/2010/06/humanist-hero-jacob-bronowski-by-tim-stephenson/
Humanist Heritage – Jacob Bronowski: http://humanistheritage.org.uk/articles/jacob-bronowski/
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of ethically concerned, non-religious people in the UK. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief, and for a secular state.