Victor Rothschild (1910-1990)

The title alone of Kenneth Rose's 2003 biography, 'Elusive Rothschild: The Life of Victor, Third Baron' suggests the enigmatic personality of its subject. The blurb for Kenneth Rose’s book describes Victor Rothschild as “A zoologist by choice and training” and Rothschild was indeed connected with the Department of Zoology for 35 years.

Victor Rothschild was born in 1910, and after early years at a preparatory school was educated at Harrow.  In 1923, at the age of 13, he had already had to cope with the death by suicide of his father, the entomologist and banker Charles Rothschild, at the age of just 46. When he arrived at Trinity College in 1929, Victor was a conspicuously flamboyant undergraduate: he drove a spectacular Bugatti, for example. At Trinity, he studied English, French and physiology. The physiology particularly captured his interest. In 1935, Rothschild began a four-year Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, and chose to join the Department of Zoology, under the influence of James Gray (who became Professor of Zoology in 1937, succeeding J. Stanley Gardiner). Rothschild obtained his Ph.D. in 1937, and in the same year he became Lord Rothschild, having inherited the title of the 3rd Baron Rothschild, at the age of 26, from his uncle Walter. Victor had married for the first time in 1933.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Rothschild was recruited to MI5 as an adviser on scientific matters. He came to specialise in counter-sabotage and explosives, and this included his personal involvement in bomb defusing and disposal. For this hazardous work he received the George Medal in 1944. He was also involved in other intelligence operations, including a successful project to infiltrate the web of Nazi agents in London. It is of relevance to much later developments that in his early years at Trinity College one of his close friendships was with the hugely talented Anthony Blunt, who was much later exposed as a spy for the Russians.

Towards the end of the War, Victor Rothschild’s first marriage had foundered and he remarried in 1946. After the War he returned to the Department of Zoology to resume work on fertilization. Suzanne Reeve, who wrote the Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society article on Rothschild, records that the name on his door in the Department read simply ‘N.M.V. Rothschild’. (He was, indeed, Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, but always used the ‘Victor’.)  Reeve suggests that Rothschild was very concerned to establish his scientific reputation without suspicion that he had been aided by privilege; however he did publish in this period as ‘Lord Rothschild’. It was the work done in the Department, and for several weeks of the year at a marine biological laboratory, that gained Rothschild a scientific reputation, an Sc.D. (in 1950) and his F.R.S. Much of this work was done in collaboration with Michael Swann (later Lord Swann) and resulted in a series of five papers published between 1949 and 1952; three of these are with Swann as coauthor. Rothschild concentrated on physiological and biochemical aspects of fertilization, and on the numerical analysis of the results, whereas the younger Michael Swann was more concerned with the cell biological aspects. The two key papers in this series are, arguably:

Lord Rothschild & Swann, M.M. (1949). The Fertilization Reaction in the Sea-Urchin Egg: A Propagated Response to Sperm Attachment. J Exp Biol 26: 164–176.

Lord Rothschild & Swann, M.M. (1951). The Fertilization Reaction in the Sea-Urchin Egg: The Probability of a successful sperm-egg collision. J Exp Biol 28: 403–416.

The latter paper includes, as part of its publication information, a statement that the work was done at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, and the Marine Station, Millport. It also includes an acknowledgment that reads ‘We are greatly indebted to Prof. R. A. Fisher, F.R.S., for patient and unstinting advice’. The sophisticated mathematics used in the paper make use of maximum likelihood and bear all the signs of Fisher’s assistance.

When Rothschild was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 it was for his work on sperm physiology and aspects of fertilization. Rothschild’s book 'Fertilization' was published in 1956.

Many of Rothschild’s papers were published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, including his later papers, up to 1962, on bull spermatozoa. A full list of his papers in the JEB, including those with various other coauthors, may be found by searching with his name on the web page of the journal. Victor Rothschild remained affiliated with the Department of Zoology until 1970.

The period of Rothschild’s active involvement in experimental science overlapped with ever-expanding roles in public life. He became a familiar visitor to the Weizmann Institute, in Israel, where he called on his experience to offer guidance on the development of Israeli science. Already in 1948 he had been appointed Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), a post in which he served for ten years. In this role he was responsible for a number of important developments, not least the achievement of autonomy for the ARC, giving it the same sort of status as enjoyed by the Medical Research Council. His pre-existing interest in farming, together with his high profile at the ARC opened the way for Shell (that had an involvement in agrochemicals) to recruit him, first as a scientific adviser and then, in 1961, as Vice-Chairman of Shell Research. His role at Shell continued to expand. It is quite clear from many sources that the boldness, clarity and immediacy with which he expressed his ideas appealed to those in political life, and in 1971, shortly after his compulsory retirement from Shell at the age of 60, Rothschild took up the post of Head of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS, the ‘Think Tank’). Rothschild remained in this post until he resigned in 1974, shortly after the election defeat of Edward Heath as Prime Minister. Although Rothschild served two Conservative Prime Ministers, Heath and Thatcher, he sat as a Labour peer in the House of Lords, where, however, he was only minimally active.

Under Rothschild’s direction the advice of the CPRS to the Cabinet was not without controversy. A 1971 Government Green Paper dealt with issues of research and development. Victor’s contribution to this clearly included some proposals drawn from his experiences in the commercial world of Shell. The scientific community felt severely threatened by suggestions that some funding should be transferred from the Research Councils to government departments: feelings ran high. Essentially the report was proposing not just a readjustment of the balance of funding, but an element of removal of decision making away from practising scientists. There were fallings-out and recriminations. It seems that some of the controversy was the consequence of the proposals themselves and some was the consequence of the manner in which they were made.

Suzanne Reeve’s conclusion about Rothschild’s time with the CPRS was that much of Whitehall found that the independent-mindedness on display was too challenging for comfort. Her summary of the Rothschild approach during this period is illuminating:

“If Victor liked you he expected to have your life at his command; having imprinted his own high standards of the way he expected things to be done, he relentlessly questioned you, tested you, berated you, cherished you and exploited you …” But she also notes that, in the team, “No one complained.”

After leaving the CPRS, a restless Victor Rothschild inevitably took on a series of new roles. In 1975 he joined the Rothschild family bank as a Director. During the seventies and eighties he became Chairman of the Royal Commission on Gambling, promoted the establishment of Biotechnology Investment Ltd, and participated in the review of the Social Science Research Council.

Victor Rothschild’s life is documented in many sources, several of them the work of the man himself. With such an embarrassment of biographical riches it is inevitable that there are occasional contradictions between accounts of this complex man. Who was Victor Rothschild?

The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” How much of Rothschild’s character came from the fact that he was wealthy? Doubtless his social standing and financial security (frequently used for the benefit of others) must have enabled him to open some doors that might otherwise have remained closed. Was the family’s record of intellectual achievement and originality, not to say sometimes downright eccentricity, the prime influence? Many reading this biographical sketch may know that his siblings, Miriam Rothschild and Nica de Koenigswarter, also had colourful lives. Dame Miriam Rothschild was an entomologist and (continuing her father Charles’ enthusiasm) a conservationist. She had links to many members of the biological community in Cambridge and Oxford. Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter (Nica was short for ‘Pannonica’, after the specific name of a moth; her first name was more prosaically Kathleen) was the patron and friend of a series of jazz musicians including Thelonious Monk, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker (who died in her New York suite, under her care) and Miles Davis. (Incidentally, Victor Rothschild himself was an accomplished jazz pianist.) These brief mentions hardly do his two sisters justice, as a little searching of online sources will illustrate.

If the sources on Victor Rothschild’s scientific and public career are many, the accounts of one episode in his life are especially numerous and problematic. The name of Anthony Blunt appeared early in this biographical sketch, when Rothschild knew him at Trinity. It was not until 1980 that Blunt was revealed, to both Parliament and public, as a spy for Soviet Russia. Victor Rothschild had known this for some time, and his shock and disgust at the revelation is documented. The spies Burgess, Maclean and Philby had already been unmasked. Together with Blunt, they constituted ‘The Cambridge Four’. But it was widely believed that there was a fifth. Victor Rothschild’s early and continuing friendship with Blunt, and Rothschild’s membership of the intelligence services, made Victor a rather obvious object of suspicion. Eventually, in the early 1990s John Cairncross was publicly revealed as the ‘fifth man’. The intelligence services had known about his activities since 1964, and Margaret Thatcher had informed Parliament in 1981. In 1990, however, the double agent Oleg Gordievsky (together with the Cambridge historian of espionage, Christopher Andrew) published KGB. This book and several additional sources over the next few years finally confirmed to the general public the role of Cairncross.

The persistent speculation around Victor Rothschild’s possible involvement in Soviet espionage, whether as ‘fifth man’ or not, disturbed him deeply, and occasioned an impassioned letter to The Daily Telegraph in early December 1986, in which he requested that the "Director General of MI5 should state publicly that he has unequivocal, repeat, unequivocal, evidence, that I am not, and never have been a Soviet agent."

The debacle in the House of Commons, when Margaret Thatcher initially declined (five times) to confirm that Victor Rothschild was not a Soviet spy, is recorded in an archive BBC news item that includes a short clip of Rothschild himself commenting on the betrayal by Anthony Blunt.

The next day, in a written statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said “I have now considered more fully Lord Rothschild 's letter in The Daily Telegraph yesterday, in which he referred to innuendos that he had been a Soviet agent... I am advised that we have no evidence that he was ever a Soviet agent.”

In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Victor Rothschild became fascinated by probability and statistics. Accordingly, he approached Dr P.M.E. Altham of the Statistical Laboratory in Cambridge for ‘supervisions’. In 2003 Pat Altham wrote a very engaging account of their meetings and progress, partly as a response to reading Kenneth Rose’s 2003 biography of Victor. One outcome of this is that Victor Rothschild published two books on the subject. The first was his 'Random Variables' (1984), followed by 'Probability Distributions' (with N. Logothetis) in 1986. Pat Altham’s account is available online.

Victor Rothschild died in March 1990. Those who would like more detail about his work and his life should start with the 1994 Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society by the distinguished civil servant Suzanne Reeve (now Lady Warner) who worked with him. A brief search online will provide many other accounts.

A bibliography for Victor Rothschild may be found in The Rothschild Family Archive.

A forthcoming book by Roley Thomas, 'The Spy and the Saboteur: The Untold Story of Victor Rothschild', claims that “With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unheard testimony, it unlocks for the first time the story of Victor Rothschild." The book is due to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, but at the time of writing this biographical sketch a publication date had not yet been announced.

A reading of many sources suggests that, whatever other talents Victor Rothschild so clearly possessed, he was blessed with the ability observable in children (and in elderly academics who have nothing more to lose) of asking questions that everyone would like to ask but does not dare. Hence he was able to go from initially asking Pat Altham “What do you really mean by a random variable?” to writing his textbook Random Variables. Victor Rothschild clearly combined a vigorous persona, with a restless, perpetually questioning mind. No wonder successive governments pulled him in when they hoped for radical solutions to apparently intractable problems.

Adrian Friday
May 2025