These had most to give

The work depicts a slim young man, modelled naturalistically, standing naked on a square bronze plinth, with legs together, arms spread wide, and head tipped back.

Scott said in 1927 that it was "expressive of sacrifice, of absolute surrender to ideas, and I intended it to typify the holocaust of youth during the war."

Some members of the institutes management committee wished to reject the gift, as being too evocative of death, martyrdom and tragedy, rather than scientific research and discovery, but the building's architect Herbert Baker was in favour.

Scott's bronze statue of A. W. Lawrence was mounted on a stone base in the garden outside the building when it was officially opened on 20 November 1934.

The inscription on the plinth was changed to read: "LUX / PERPETUA / LUCEAT EIS" ("may eternal light shine upon them"), a Latin phrase from the Requiem Mass.