This archive is the collected papers of William Russell and Claire Russell, who were husband and wife. It covers both their professional lives and their personal lives.
William 'Bill' Moy Stratten Russell was born in Plymouth on 26 March 1925, the only child of Sir Frederick Stratten Russell, Director of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. He attended Marlborough College and won a scholarship to study Classics at New College, Oxford in 1941. In 1943, during the Second World War, he joined the Army and served as a rifleman in the 12th Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, refusing a commission. After the war he returned to Oxford to continue his studies, but switched to Zoology and was awarded a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences in 1948. He graduated with a DPhil in animal behaviour in 1952.
In 1954 he was appointed by the Universities Federation of Animal Welfare (UFAW) as a research fellow, to undertake research into the history and progress of the introduction of humane methods into biological research. Rex Burch was recruited as his assistant. Two main methods were employed in their work: a historical study of the literature of experimental biology (undertaken by Russell) and a survey of the present trends in the field (undertaken by Burch under the supervision of Russell). In 1959 Russell, in conjunction with Burch, published 'The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique' in which they introduced the 'Three Rs' principles for the more ethical use of animals in scientific research - Replacement, Reduction and Refinement.
After leaving UFAW, Russell practiced privately as a psychoanalyst. His interests shifted to social biology and after a couple of years as Scientific Information Officer at the Commonwealth Bureau of Pastures and Field Crops (from 1964), he was appointed in 1966 as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Reading, to teach Animal Sociology, Social Biology (genetics, organic evolution, cultural evolution and ecology), Statistics and Demography. He was promoted to Reader in 1971 and Professor in 1986. He retired as Emeritus Professor in 1990.
During his career, Russell published a vast number of research papers on a wide range of subjects including ethology, social biology, folklore and science fiction, many of them with his wife Claire Russell. Together they published books including 'Human Behaviour: a new approach' (1961), 'Violence, Monkeys and Man' (1968), and 'Population Crises and Cycles' (1999). Russell also published an ecological world history ''Man, Nature and History' (1967) and a science fiction novel 'The Barber of Aldebaran' in 1995.
During the 1980s Russell served terms as President of the Folklore Society (1979-1982), the Pendragon Society and the British Social Biology Council (1993). From 1989 to 1995 he was Editor of the journal 'Social Biology and Human Affairs'. Also during the 1980s he was the West of England representative on the Radio 4 programme Round Britain Quiz. He was an early member of the Institute of Biology and was invited to become a Fellow in 1987. His awards included the Smith Kline Beecham Laboratory Animal Welfare Prize of the Research Defence Society (1994), the Bronze Medal of the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University at Hradec Kralove (1997) and the Silver Medal of the University of Bologna (1999). William Russell died on 27 July 2006.
Russell and Burch's book 'The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique' made little impact at the time it was published, but the Three Rs approach began to gain momentum amongst the animal protection community in the late 1970s and 1980s. 'The Principles' was to be an inspiration to many, especially University of Nottingham Emeritus Professor Michael Balls who has written that its lasting value and significance lies in Russell's often theoretical analysis of the ethical and scientific dilemmas involved in animal experimentation. During the 1990s the principles became more widely accepted and are now fully endorsed by many organisations. Recognition of Russell and Burch increased, and Russell began to attend a wide range of conferences including the World Congresses on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. In 1991 the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) introduced their Russell and Burch Award for outstanding contributions to alternative methods, and in 1994 the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experimentation (FRAME) named their new building in Nottingham 'Russell and Burch House' (Professor Balls was Chairman of the Trustees of FRAME).
Claire Hillel was born in Berlin in 1919, the daughter of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. She escaped to England in 1938 and spent part of the Second World War in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. After the war she attended the University of Oxford. She later trained as a psychoanalyst, working in private practice from 1949. Her first husband was the psychoanalyst Jim Hayes. Their marriage ended in divorce, and she married Bill Russell in the early 1950s. In addition to the research collaborations with her husband, she published many research papers individually and also published poetry. She died in 1999.
