The UK media is abuzz over a Friday afternoon announcement that Susan Greenfield, the Royal Institution’s director, has been made redundant. Greenfield is a neuroscientist at Oxford University with a reputation as a charismatic and sometimes controversial promoter of science to the public. It was just those credentials that made her a good fit for the Royal Institution, Britain’s oldest independent scientific society. When she was hired in 1998, the Institution was suffering from an image as a stodgy academic society with little public appeal.

Greenfield sought to make the Institution more accessible, creating the Science Media Centre, which promotes science news in the national press, and planning a major renovation of the organisation’s central London headquarters. That refurbishment ultimately ended up costing some £22 million pounds, well over the original budget. The money was raised in part by selling off valuable real estate in central London and by raiding endowment funds marked for other purposes, according to a report from the Charities Commission. They also left the Institution in a tight financial situation.

The Institution stopped short of blaming Greenfield for the problems it currently faced. Rather, it said in a statement that the role of Director “has ceased to exist”. “Baroness Greenfield leaves with our thanks and we wish her all the very best in her future endeavours,” the statement adds.

Greenfield appears to see things differently. In a separate statement, she says that she is “shocked and dismayed” by the dismissal and that she will be seeking a hearing before an employment tribunal on grounds of sexual discrimination.

Regardless of how the dispute turns out, it appears that the RI is out of scientific hands, at least for the moment. Chris Rofe, a former administrator at the Millennium Dome, will serve as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. Greenfield’s redundancy means that the role of director is no more, and Rofe will head the institution for the foreseeable future.

Lisa Jardine, chairman of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority and until December a member of the Royal Institution’s Bored board told me she was worried about the current lack of scientific leadership at the top. “I do not understand what the Royal Institution is without a charismatic scientist as director,” she says.