| Description | The Academic Assistance Council was established in 1933 to offer funds for German scientists who had fallen from favour under Nazi rule, to leave Germany and take up posts in British academia and industry. In March 1936 it changed its name to the Society for Protection of Science and Learning. Simon's relationship with the organisation was mostly as a referee for claimants for the Society's funds.
The file is made up of a range of material on the Society for Protection of Science and Learning and on scientists who came within its orbit, for example Lothar Meyer and Hans Epstein.
Hans Epstein was a physical chemist who came to the UK in the late 1930s to work at the Clarendon Laboratory. The file consists of correspondence with both Epstein and with the Society for Protection of Science and Learning on giving a grant to Epstein in order for him to continue his research in the UK and also on attempts to help Epstein's Father leave Germany.
Correspondence with Dr Lothar Meyer also concerns his attempts to leave Germany. The correspondence breaks off in July 1939, with the possibility of Meyer finding work with British Oxygen. (Later correspondence with Meyer in the Simon Papers finds him in 1947 working for the Institute of Metals, University of Chicago).
The file also contains correspondence between the Society and Simon, regarding Dr Oscar Heil, a German national who was employed at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1939. Heil applied for a post at the Admiralty but disappeared to Germany when the Intelligence Services investigated him. Simon expressed his concern to the Society that this incident had led to the authorities being unwilling to employ German emigres in military offices and laboratories. |