[1][2] 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.
[1] The name Ratio was suggested by Albert Uttley, it being the Latin root meaning "computation or the faculty of mind which calculates, plans and reasons".
The use was probably inspired by an earlier suggestion by Donald Mackay of the 'MR club', from Machina ratiocinatrix, a term used by Norbert Wiener in the introduction to his then recently published book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
[1] The club was the most intellectually powerful and influential cybernetics grouping in the UK, and many of its members went on to become extremely prominent scientists.