It was with particular pleasure that Council made the 1991 award of the Cedric Carter Memorial Medal, which recognises outstanding services to the Galton Institute, to Dr John Peel. Elected a Fellow in 1962 and a member of Council in 1963, and Treasurer for the past 24 years, he has brought wisdom and cool judgement to the many issues debated by Council since then.
Much of his academic work has been central to the Institute’s interests. His researches into contraceptive methods and their uses spanned a period when the UK and elsewhere saw a revolution in the attitudes to the control of reproduction. His textbook of contraceptive methods (with Malcolm Potts) remains a standard text. His marriage survey in Hull, following up for ten years all couples marrying there in 1965, compared their stated intentions regarding family building with what they actually achieved - and in doing so provided valuable early data on the reliability of different contraceptive methods.
His long experience in social science similarly spanned a time of emerging recognition of the potential contribution of the social scientist to guiding the direction in which society is moving. In ‘‘Population and Pollution’’ in 1971, he wrote ‘‘Just as the biologist has come to accept that he has what he is pleased to call ‘social responsibility’, so too the social scientist has recognised a central concern with the problems arising from the development of science.’’
His work for the Institute has indeed been indefatigable. Few have made a greater contribution to its well being and the furtherance of its aims. He was joint organiser of no fewer than eight of the Institute’s symposia and co-edited the resulting volumes, including the two remarkable triads on ‘‘Equalities and inequalities’’ and on ‘‘Population’’. The Institute particularly valued his work consolidating its association with the Marie Stopes estate and the Birth Control Trust, and his contribution to the two major events in its most recent development - the consolidation of its financial position by the sale of the Eccleston Square property and the application to change to the name of the Galton Institute. The last negotiation he carried out with the most admirable thoroughness and skill, brining what at times seemed an impossible problem to the desired happy solution.
For his unremitting attention to the Institute’s interests, for the vigilance which has led him to spend so much unremarked time and energy in correspondence about its affairs, it was with the greatest satisfaction that Council made the award.