The Ratio Club was a small British informal dining club from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics.
History
The idea of the club arose from a symposium on animal behaviour held in July 1949 by the Society of Experimental Biology in Cambridge. The club was founded by the neurologist John Bates, with other notable members such as W. Ross Ashby. Warren McCulloch made presentations to the club twice, the first time at its inaugural meeting (a talk which the members found disappointing), and became a correspondent with and supporter of a number of its members. Others who attended at least one Ratio Club event as guests included Walter Pitts, Claude Shannon, J.Z. Young, C.H. Waddington, Peter Elias, J. C. R. Licklider, Oliver Selfridge, Benoît Mandelbrot, Colin Cherry. One one occasion I.J. Good brought along the then director of the USA's National Security Agency
The club has been considered the most influential cybernetics group in the UK, and many of its members went on to become prominent scientists.