Maurice Goldsmith, a member of NASW since 1949, died in London on March 2 at the age of 83. Trained at the London School of Economics as a social scientist, he came under the spell of J.D. Bernal’s The Social Function of Science (published in 1939) and promptly turned to science writing. His colleagues were Ritchie Calder, J. G. Crowther, and Arthur Haslett of the London Times. The four of them in 1947 became the founders of the Association of British Science Writers.
Goldsmith went on to exercise his fondness for institutions. His spell on UNESCO’s journal, Impact of Science on Society, made him a lifelong supporter of UNESCO and all its doings. Back in Britain, he founded what is now the Foundation for Science Policy, which he kept alive partly by his own writing and publications. Bernal remained a hero, as Goldsmith’s biography of him showed. Joseph Needham became another (with another biography.)
But he was also a gregarious soul. He was forever organizing dinner parties made rowdy by an introductory provocation of his own — and kept seemly by his adroitness and his jokes. The son of a Polish tailor and brought up in the East End of London, he had no bombast. Only self-depreciation. Asked recently whether he was still in touch with Friends of UNESCO, he shrugged and said, “Oh yes, still chairman.” Over his last months, he was gloomy about his own health (but kept on working) and then further depressed by the serious illness of his wife Anne (who survives him). But he never stopped the jokes. — Based entirely on an obituary by Sir John Maddox in the April 1997 ABSW Reporter.