David Eisner, President, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.112.6

I should begin by apologising that this, my final, President’s view article is more self-serving than usual. My term as President ends at the Annual General Meeting so I think that this may be an appropriate time to reminisce.

Today’s Society is very different from that which I joined in 1981. Then there were up to eight scientific meetings a year. The total number of meetings has not altered greatly but there is now one general Annual Meeting with the remainder being more specialised. The location of meetings has also changed. In the past, meetings were always held in universities. While it was always interesting to see where colleagues worked and, indeed, to be able to put on demonstrations, most universities cannot easily host the current large meetings and do not always have appropriate venues for poster communications, an increasingly used medium in recent years.

The introduction of posters is not the only change. Until the 1980s, meetings consisted entirely of oral communications, with the exception of a handful of prize lectures given over the year. Symposia, including invited presentations, began in association with meetings and now form the bulk of the science with free oral communications virtually absent from many Annual Meetings. Orals have made a comeback for Europhysiology 2018 due to encouragement from our partner societies,  and it will be interesting to see what the reaction of Members is.

The Society (like the wider society in which it exists) has changed enormously since it was founded as a dining society for men in 1876. Attempts to allow women to join in 1913 were famously blocked with Ernest Starling pointing out that ‘… it would be improper to dine with ladies smelling of dog’. (I had always assumed that this meant that the ladies smelled of dog but, as pointed out by Lovatt-Evans in his inaugural Bayliss-Starling lecture, it referred to the men). The first female members were admitted in 1915, and The Society recently proudly celebrated the centenary. Some bizarre distinctions were  still maintained and, even when I joined  The Society, women were required to use their first names when submitting papers to The Journal of Physiology.

The Society has a past of which we should be very proud. It was founded in 1876 at a time when physiology was almost synonymous with what is now called biomedical science. Over the years, parts of the subject have split off to form their own Societies. One of the founders of the Biochemical Society (1911) was William Halliburton, Professor of Physiology at King’s College London. The British Pharmacological Society was founded 20 years later, again by members of The Physiological Society, and held its first meeting in Oxford the day before that of The Society. Many other parts of physiology such as neuroscience, endocrinology, cardiovascular science, etc. have their own organ-based societies. A challenge for The Physiological Society is to ensure that these scientists continue to value their connections with other physiologists at least as much as those with people working on their favourite organ. This is not helped by the tendency (at least in the UK) for universities to increasingly organise staff into organ-based groupings rather than ‘ologies’.

The organisation and administration of The Society has altered out of all recognition. In 1981, the three main officers (Committee Secretary, Meetings Secretary and Treasurer) were supported by assistants based in their universities. There is now a centralised and professional staff under the leadership of our Chief Executive, Dariel Burdass. Such an arrangement is essential for handling the massive increase in regulation concerning businesses and charities with the financial size of The Society. As someone brought up in the previous incarnation of The Society, it has taken me some time to adjust to the idea that Council determines strategy and then hands it over to staff to execute. I have greatly enjoyed my interactions with the incredibly energetic Dariel and have only occasionally felt like the minister in ‘Yes Minister’! More seriously, The Society is fortunate to have such a dedicated staff.

What have I learned in the past four years? When I began, I had little appreciation of the amount of time and effort that is required just to run the organisation, even before one produces journals and meetings. Perhaps Health & Safety and the Risk Register should not have been such a surprise but employment law, GDPR and the legalities associated with the fact that The Society has tenants in Hodgkin Huxley House were. I am sure that I have picked up many ‘transferable’ skills that may come in useful. Like many Members, I have long associated The Society with scientific meetings and publications but had little idea of the breadth of the various public engagement and policy activities that are carried out.

What am I most pleased with? Although I thought that I would never say it, it is good to see that The Society has a strategic plan which will be used to determine priorities  and, in particular, avoid the risk of starting and stopping projects as members of Council and committees turn over. From a personal point of view, I am delighted by the establishment of the Europhysiology series of meetings. Several of my predecessors have tried to initiate similar projects; I was fortunate to find our European partners now very enthusiastic.

What other opportunities and challenges does The Society face under its new leadership? One obvious one is that more than 90% of income comes from The Journal of Physiology. This is used to subsidise scientific meetings as well as policy, educational and other outreach activities. There is considerable external pressure to move from subscription-based journals to those which are completely Open Access; this would remove the bulk of our income. Can an alternative income source be realised and, if not, what are the consequences for scientific meetings and other activities? This and other questions, many of which are unknown, will no doubt occupy Council in future.

It has been a real pleasure to work together with the other members of Council. Much is owed for their enormous effort. The Society is now in the very good hands of a new President, Bridget Lumb, who has enormous experience of leadership, both in The Society and University of Bristol. She will be an inspiring President. I wish her well!