May 30: Baron Solly Zuckerman

Solly Zuckerman Thorpe, a pioneering primatologist, scientific adviser to the British military, activist for nuclear disarmament, and “the last evangelist of the Enlightenment,” as Charles Foster called him, was born on this date in 1904 in Cape Town, South Africa. Zuckerman moved to England in 1926 and taught at Oxford between 1934 and 1945. During World War II he served the Allies as an expert on aerial bombardment and helped the British design aspects of their civil defense. He was secretary of the London Zoological Society for more than twenty years and published two important books, The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes (1931) and Scientists and War (1966). Zuckerman was knighted in 1956 and was awarded a life peerage in 1971.

“Science creates the future without knowing what the future will be.” —Solly Zuckerman