Address at the memorial service for Sir David Christie Martin (1914- 1976) at St Columba’s Church of Scotland, London on 9 February 1977

Great institutions survive and remain great, not of their own momentum, but through the devotion of those who serve them. And no man ever showed more devotion to the Royal Society, and to all it has stood for during m ore than three centuries, than David Martin whose memory we are met this day to honour. Born in Kirkcaldy he spent his whole working life in England but never lost either the accent of his native Fife or the unaffected warm thin human relations which is a characteristic of so many of his countrymen. When in 1933 he crossed the Firth of Forth and entered the University of Edinburgh to study chemistry, it was with the firm intention of becoming a schoolmaster and only pressure from his teachers during his undergraduate years caused him to take up research in physical chemistry after graduation. But it was during his Ph.D. course that the foundations for his future career were laid when he became the first secretary and then the first elected President of the new King’s Buildings Com m on Room and became much involved with a wide range of student affairs. So it was that although after completing his Ph.D. in 1939 he was awarded a Carnegie Senior Research Scholarship he resigned it to become Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society of Arts. Seconded to the Research and Development Department of the Ministry of Supply for the duration of the war, his outstanding administrative talents became ever more evident and following a short spell as General Secretary of the Chemical Society he joined the Royal Society in 1947 and was its chief executive officer for some thirty years until his sudden and untimely death on 16 December 1976

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