DrNicholas Russell

Nick Russell’s career has been in vocational education, initially teaching applied biology, then curriculum development in post-16 science education with the Nuffield Foundation, and latterly in science communication at Birkbeck College London, and Imperial College London. In the late 1980s and early 90s he was a freelance journalist, writing on science, science education, and the history of science and technology for national newspapers, and the science and science education trade press.

From 1995 to 2008 he was Director of the Science Communication Group and from 2005 to 2008 Head of the Department of Humanities at Imperial College.

He is the author of Communicating Science: Professional, popular, literary, Cambridge University Press, October 2009 (www.cambridge.org/9780521131728)

Activities:

Recent Project

Nick’s latest project is a history/memoir of the British domestic appliance firm, Russell Hobbs, to be published as Household Names. Russell Hobbs and the Automatic Kettle. A story of Invention and Design, by The Book Guild in February 2021.

Founded in 1952, three years later in 1955, Russell Hobbs produced the first kettle that switched itself off when it boiled. The second iteration of this kettle, the K2, came out in 1960, stayed in production for over twenty years and has become an icon of British product design.

The founders, Peter Hobbs and Bill Russell, came from senior positions in another classic appliance firm, Morphy Richards. Bill Russell was the inventor/designer while Peter Hobbs was responsible for sales and marketing.

Russell Hobbs and Morphy Richards were expanding manufacturers during the final phase of widespread British-owned industrial success in the two decades after the Second World War. They succeeded by focusing relentlessly on innovation; inventing, designing and making consistently high quality products. With the decline of British-owned manufacturing since the 1970s these core objectives seem to have been forgotten. If there is a resurgence in British manufacturing after Brexit, then the story of Russell Hobbs is a heritage example of the principles needed for industry to be reborn.

I have a personal interest as Bill Russell was my father. There is also an Imperial College connection. Bill Russell always acknowledged that he learned all about product design from Donal Morphy, when he was Donal’s Chief Development Engineer at Morphy Richards. Morphy was an alumnus of Imperial College, studying electrical engineering here between 1917 and 1920. He remained active in alumni affairs for many years afterwards.

Current Project

My next project will tell the story of the parallel careers of two emigré architects with big personalities and professional opinions, Berthold Lubetkin and Ērno Goldfinger, fellow travelling Communists who played major roles in the massive post-war expansion of British local authority council home building, especially medium and high rise blocks of flats using reinforced concrete. Since 1980 such public sector construction for rent has declined sharply, and high-rise council blocks are considered ugly and socially dysfunctional. This whole council housing era of the 1950s and 60s is widely believed to be a huge mistake. But there is an alternative way of looking at it; the great boom was probably the best attempt ever made in this country to provide decent housing for the majority of ordinary working people. Nothing before or since has been as successful.

Previous Projects

In the past Nick worked on the representation of science in British fiction and a post-graduate student, Andreia Azevedo-Soares was awarded her PhD in June 2013 with the thesis title, 'Imagining humans in the age of DNA. Genetics and contemporary British fiction'.

With colleagues from Imperial College, Nick started a story writing project across the South Kensington institutions, The Albertopolis Writing Circle. The aim was to write short fiction or factual stories giving insight into the working lives of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, doctors, business people, musicians and visual artists. The Circle ran for two years and closed in 2016.

Recent articles and features

Russell, Nicholas et. al. (2017), Topping up the Trust Fund, Times Higher Education, 9 February, 40-45.

Russell, Nicholas (2014), What did Scientists Do All Day? Scientists at Work in British Fiction from the 17th to the Mid-20th Century. The Fiction Meets Science Project, University of Bremen, Working Paper 1. (available at the Project Website).

Russell, Nicholas (September 2009), The New Men: scientists at work in popular British fiction between the early 1930s and late 1960s. Science Communication, 31(1), 29-56.

Russell, Nicholas (April 2007), Science and scientists in Victorian and Edwardian literary novels:insights into the emergence of a new profession. Public Understanding of Science, 16(2), 205-222.

Russell, Nicholas (18 February 2006), Thomas Hardy, Richard Proctor and the dialogue of the deaf. How scientists evolved to be resistant to public accountability. LabLit.com the culture of science in fiction and art.

Russell, Nicholas (9 April 2006). Henrik Ibsen and public science policy. Taking STEPS to enhance PEST. LabLit.com the culture of science in fiction and art.