A Physicist’s Labour in War and Peace

Memoirs 1933 – 1999

E Walter Kellermann

Published in 2007by M-Y Books

© Copyright 2004

E Walter Kellermann

The right of E Walter Kellermann to beidentified as the author of this work has beenasserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights Reserved

No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without writtenpermission. No paragraph of this publication maybe reproduced, copied or transmitted save with thewritten permission or in accordance with theprovisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (asamended). Any person who does any unauthorisedact in relation to this publication may be liable tocriminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

A CIP catalogue record for this title isavailable from the British Library

Cover picture: The Manchester Team Transporting LeadPhotographed by D Broadbent

ISBN 0-9551679-9X978-0-99551679-9-7

A Physicist’s Labour in War and Peace

Memoirs 1933 – 1999

E Walter Kellermann

Contents Chapter 1 - Nazis Change Our Lives 1 Chapter 2 - Studies in Vienna amid Political Danger 13 Chapter 3 - Permission To Land In Britain 36 Chapter 4 - Theoretical physics in Britain, A new discipline

- The contribution of refugees 40 Chapter 5 - New Ideas and a Breakthrough in Solid State

Physics 61 Chapter 6 - Imminent War? How Klaus Fuchs Saw It 69 Chapter 7 - The Internment Of Genuine Refugees 78 Chapter 8 - Shipped To Canada, But Democracy Lives 89 Chapter 9 - A Small University College in War Time 101 Photographs 117 Chapter 10 - Planning The Future Of Science 127 Chapter 11 - Cosmic Rays - A Peaceful Study Of Nuclear

Physics 136 Chapter 12 - Blackett’s Laboratory 140 Chapter 13 - Extensive Air Showers - Detecting the

Highest Energies 147 Chapter 14 - Manchester Detects New Sub-Nuclear

Particles 157 Chapter 15 - Moving On 167 Chapter 16 - A Cosmic Ray Laboratory In Leeds 176 Chapter 17 - Cosmic Ray Physicists Meet in Mexico 183 Chapter 18 - The British Large Air Shower Experiment 190 Chapter 19 - The Highest Energies - an End To The

Shower Spectrum? 195 Chapter 20 - A New Particle? - Hopes Raised and Dashed 201 Chapter 21 - A Place for Religion 212 Chapter 21 - British Science Quo Vadis? 219 Epilogue 244 Acknowledgements and another CV 247 GLOSSARY 250 About the author 254

1

Chapter 1 - Nazis Change Our Lives

My mother and her two boys, my brother Heinz (laterHenry) and I, lived in a 4-room flat in the Knesebeckstrasse,one of the streets crossing the Kurfürstendamm, not in one ofthe imposing buildings fronting the street, but in a‘Gartenhaus’, the secondary building which was reached bya separate entrance after crossing a quite pleasant yard. Shehad no other regular income than her widow’s pension.Salary wise, therefore, we belonged to the lower middleclass.My mother, Thekla Lehmann, was born in Warburg, a littletown in Westphalia, which in the middle ages had been aprosperous market town, a centre of commerce and farming.Its relative importance had declined by my time, but it hasrecently expanded again and attracted some tourism. Itsmedieval past was and still is recognisable in its ‘Altstadt’with its church in the valley near the river crossing. Therewas also a small synagogue and cemetery with somegravestones at least two centuries old. The Neustadt on ahilltop overlooking the Altstadt also had its church as well asa Protestant chapel whose clear sounding bell contrastedwith the weighty and imposing bells of the two Catholicchurches on a Sunday. The three communities lived togetherpeacefully although, as my mother told me, the mainProtestant farmer in the Altstadt could not resist annoyingthe Catholic community when on the highest Catholic holydays he would cart manure through the streets. Mygrandfather, my mother’s father, owned a general store in theAltstadt and the family lived over the shop in a quiteimposing building flanking the market square on one side.The family had lived there for a long time. My grandfatherhad fought with the Prussian army against the Danes in 1866and until very old age would take part in the annual march ofthe local veterans. My mother was one of the few Jewish

2

girls at the time to receive a secular higher education andwould qualify as a teacher.My father, Benzion Kellermann, had been one of the rabbisof the Berlin Jewish ‘Gemeinde’ (Congregation), theorganisation recognised by the government as representingall Jews residing in Greater Berlin. He had died in 1923when I was eight years old of heart failure which todaymight have been avoided by by-pass surgery. He, too, wasborn in a small town, Gerolzhofen in Bavaria. The town’srecords show that his grandfather, a Moses Kellermann, wasa draper in the town at the beginning of the 19th century, andthat his father, Joseph Löb Kellermann had been a candidatefor the rabbinate and was employed as a teacher of religion.My father, too, worked at first as a teacher of religion. Hetaught in Berlin, where he qualified as a Rabbi and inFrankfurt before his first rabbinical appointment in the smallEast German town of Konitz. Although his inclinations weremore to be a teacher and writer he more than fulfilled hisduties as minister in this first appointment. One of his firstduties was to protect the Jewish community in Konitz fromviolent attacks during a near-pogrom just before the firstworld war. Antisemitism was not a Nazi invention.Antisemites in those days still peddled the legend that Jewsrequired the blood of a Christian child to bake their Matzots,the unleavened bread sheets Jews were eating during thePassover period. When a child was found murdered justbefore the time of the Passover feast all hell broke out inKonitz. My father had to put a wardrobe in front of hiswindows to protect himself from missiles and broken glass.He did what he could to protect his congregation and wassuccessful in persuading the government to send troops tothe town and quell the disorder. Nor was this his last actionto fight antisemitism. In 1922, when the Konitz events weredescribed in a German paper with unpleasant allusions theJewish Defence organisation ‘C V’ sued the paper and calledhim as a witness. He was deeply disturbed that in his day andage a German court would ask him to state under oath that it

3

was not part of the Jewish religion to demand Christianblood for the baking of Mazots. My father had faced verystrong opposition when after heading religion schools inBerlin for some time he applied to be appointed as rabbi. Hehad started his Jewish studies in the orthodox Jewishseminary, but could accept the orthodox teaching there nolonger. His time coincided with the new climate oftheological ideas and political liberalism. Bible criticism waspervading all faculties of divinity, and humanistic views ranthrough all spiritual life. With his friend Joseph Lehmann,whose sister would become his wife, my mother, and hisbest friend, H Sachs, who would leave Jewish studiesaltogether and become a cardiologist, he left the orthodoxseminary. My uncle Joseph and my father then enrolled asstudents in the new Jewish Academy, the ‘Hochschule derWissenschaften des Judentums’. Other Jewish scholars whobecame rabbis, notably his colleague in the Gemeinde, RabbiLeo Baeck, later the Chief rabbi of the German Jews in theNazi period, had been graduates of this academy, but myfather’s views were more extreme. For him the teachings ofthe prophets were the essentials of Judaism, rather than itsorthodox formalism. Nevertheless the Berlin Gemeindeeventually appointed him one of its rabbis. We, his two boys,my brother and I, were brought up in the same spirit and hada far more liberal education than one would expect a rabbi’ssons to receive. The Jewish Gemeinde paid my mother’swidow’s pension out of funds collected by the state throughthe ‘Kirchen’ Tax, a tax levied on all members of churches(as well as of synagogues and other recognised religiouscongregations). The Gemeinde was the roof organisationresponsible for all major Berlin synagogues except for theReform Synagogue which had more progressive services,rather like those of the London Liberal Jewish Synagogue.Here my uncle Joseph Lehmann, became one of the rabbis.When eventually my father overcame the conventionalresistance in the Gemeinde’s executive and was appointedrabbi in Berlin in 1917 he revelled in his teaching duties. He

4

gave public lectures in addition to his sermons where hecould develop his ideas of Judaism in a contemporary settingand he continued to write his pamphlets and books onphilosophical and religious themes. His most notable workswere two books, one on the Kantian concept, Das Ideal imSystem der Kantischen Philosphie (1920), and another on theinterpretation of Spinoza’s ethical ideas, Die Ethik Spinozas,(1922). The first volume of this book appeared. just beforehis death. A draft for Volume 2 was left when he died, inwhich he hoped to establish his new fundamental ideas, hisphilosophical ‘system’ which would have established him asan original philosopher. He had acquired his doctorate ofphilosophy after receiving his diploma from the Hochschuleat the University of Marburg, the German university wellknown for its strong philosophy and divinity faculties. Thishad not been easy for him when he had to earn his living as aperipatetic teacher of Hebrew texts and had to gain hisAbitur, his university entrance qualification, by privatestudy. He was accepted as undergraduate in Marburg andeventually obtained his doctorate in philosophy, all thiswhile earning his living. He often spoke to my mother,herself a good linguist and with a wide ranging knowledgeof literature, of his sons’ future. He was confident of thesuccesses of his sons who with regular schooling and, hethought, assured entrance to university would have it easierthan he had. He did not foresee the pernicious influence ofracism on our future.The policy of the Weimar republic was to ensure a liberalclimate in the country in education, and in this the Prussiangovernment at least partly succeeded in Berlin’s schools. Mybrother and I indeed profited from this policy. We wereknown to be Jews, but apart from some antisemitic teachers,who nevertheless kept their opinions mostly to themselvesuntil the Nazi regime began, we did not suffer anydiscrimination. At Berlin University, however, prejudicesemerged. Jews were rarely attacked by other students, butrunning fights in the corridors between right-wing and leftist

5

students were frequent in the pre-Nazi period. The police didnot intervene, because university ‘autonomy’ madeuniversities out of bounds to the state-controlled policeforce, a curious interpretation of the law which stipulatedthat the state should not interfere in university education,even though it paid for the universities’ upkeep. This state ofaffairs of policing terminated when the Nazis came to powerand the SS entered the universities.

My brother and I went to the Kaiser Friedrich Schule,situated a short walk along our street, one of the moreprestigious schools in West Berlin. Both of us took theclassical option, the stream with a ‘Humanistic’ curriculum.This meant that Latin and Greek were taught up to the A-level equivalent instead of modern languages which could bestudied but would not be examined by the final exam, the‘Abitur’. Not long after I had left the school in 1933 theclassic stream was discontinued and the school’s namechanged to Kaiser Friedrich Realschule.Our state was Prussia which then had a left-of-centregovernment. Syllabus and the Abitur examination questionswere moderated by the state ‘Kultur’ ministry which on thewhole was educationally progressive. The history syllabusdid not include the study of the last fifty years, and thusavoided events whose interpretation was contested fiercelyby the political parties of my day. Even events before 1880were avoided if possible. I remember once bringing up in adiscussion at school the subject of the beginnings of the1870-71 war between Prussia and France. Here I pointed tothe doubtful ‘editing’ by Bismarck of the so-called EmsDispatch which I had read somewhere had been instrumentalin triggering the war. My intervention was hotly resented bythe right-wingers in my form, the teacher avoiding anopinion. Later I heard that the teacher had feared dismissal ifhe agreed with me. He dared not suspect openly Bismarck’smotives. The ‘Iron Chancellor’ was venerated in Prussian

6

history as founder of the German Reich and beyondreproach.Our teachers professed in the main middle of the roadpolitics leaning to the centre-right, and Jewish pupils seldomheard antisemitic remarks in school, but I heard that in othersecondary schools in West Berlin Jewish students had moreunpleasant experiences. These increased during my lastspring in school in 1933, just before my Abitur exams. Hitlerhad come to power in January1933, and suddenly many‘new’ supporters of the Nazi party crawled out from insidethe school and outside. Even then, however, Nazi supporterswere still in the minority in Berlin for some time.Berlin with its mainly Social-Democratic administrationduring the Weimar republic had become a cosmopolitancapital with a flourishing cultural life in which many Jewsplayed their part. It had great theatre productions and manyprogressive directors and writers. There was generousfunding of the State theatres, and the trade unions hadfounded and financed the new Volksbühne theatre. Berlinhad three opera houses of international standards. I stillremember the first performance of Fidelio in the StädtischeOpera, which was financed by the City, with Lotte Lehmannin the title part and Bruno Walter as conductor. The BerlinPhilharmonic Orchestra was then as now one of the world’sleading orchestras. In all these events Jews played their part.There was so much Jewish cultural talent that when, after theNazis came to power and Jews were forbidden to be active intheatre or music, the Jewish population would create theirown cultural organisation, the ‘Kulturbund’, which wouldfor some time produce theatrical and musical performancesof high standard for the Jewish population, until these wereterminated by the government.In contrast to the liberal cultural life in the city Berlin’suniversity, as academia elsewhere in Germany, remainedconservative. Contrary to the arts there were hardly anyopenly Jewish university staff. On the other hand Jewish

7

students had access to higher education as laid down by thelaws of the Weimar republic.All this changed in step with a succession of antisemiticgovernment decrees issued by the Nazi government. TheReichstag had passed an Enabling Act resulting in a streamof decrees restricting Jewish activities and participation inpublic and in private life. I remember particularly the date of1st April, 1933, the day declared by the Nazi government asthe day of the Jewish Boycott. Its purpose was to drawattention to as many aspects as possible of Jewishparticipation in commerce, the arts and in the professionsand to eradicate it. That day of the boycott was theundisguised start of persecution of the Jews, and the Germanpopulation did not demur. I remember sitting in our study athome with my mother, my brother and a few friends, all ofus shaken by the most sinister foreboding. Would we beallowed to study or, as in the case of my brother, at leastcomplete our studies, and obtain a degree? Would we beallowed to work at all? Would exceptions be made for someand on what grounds? Indeed, would we survive? What ifthe Reich was really to last ‘one thousand years’ as Hitlerhad promised? Was there an escape? Where could we go?There were restrictions on immigration in most countries.Palestine was an option only for the few who would comeunder the quota fixed by the British government. Some ofthe would-be emigrants had money to pay for temporaryasylum abroad and wait there until the immigrationprocedure of the United States allowed them to enter as partof the allotted quota. Children of wealthy parents, and agifted few students supported by grants, could enter GreatBritain and some other countries for the purpose of study ifthey could afford the fees and the money to pay for theirupkeep.Because the anti-Jewish restrictions at first came in dribs anddrabs some of us still hoped at least to start a career.Perhaps, we thought, once accepted by a university beforenew decrees had been issued we could profit from better

8

times to come and might even finish our courses. I went tothe offices of the Gemeinde to enquire about the possibilitiesof qualifying for a grant to study. There I was soondisillusioned. The staff advising me took the bleakestpossible view of the future for young people like me inGermany. They suggested I should take up an apprenticeshipin farming or in other technical careers with a possible viewto work in the then Palestine or in a trade elsewhere. Icertainly would not be given a grant even if accepted by auniversity either in Germany or abroad to study medicine or,like my brother, law. I was told that there were already toomany Jewish doctors or lawyers. In fact the presence of thelarge numbers of Jews in these professions had attracted theire of the Nazis. Even before coming to power they hadthreatened to reduce the number of Jewish studentsdrastically, demanding a ‘numerus clausus’ for them in theuniversities and in the professions. True the number ofJewish practitioners of medicine and lawyers was indeedproportionally large, but many other walks of life, even inthe Weimar days, were closed to Jews. Hence theirpreponderance in these so-called ‘liberal professions’.The officers of the Gemeinde took a more lenient view ofmy aims when I told them I wanted to study mathematicsand physics. One in fact told me that he was relieved to hearthis, because the world would always need people likeEinstein. I had not pitched my hopes that high, but theypromised to consider my case, if I could find a universityplace. They advised me to wait and see whether a Germanuniversity would accept me thinking that there might befewer restrictions on Jews studying my subjects than onthose asking for a place in, say, a medical school.They were quite wrong. I had left the Kaiser FriedrichSchule with my First Class (‘Mit Auszeichnung’) Abitur.The certificate also stated that I intended to readmathematics and sciences at university. There was no doubtthat I was gifted in these subjects, but I had been advised tochoose between mathematics and physics only when I had

9

studied the subjects for some time at university level. Mymathematics teacher had told me that even in the first of mytwo pre-Abitur years, corresponding to the lower 6th form inEngland, I was by far the best mathematician in my school. Ihad also done some extra work in mathematics to make upfor the somewhat restricted syllabus in my humanisticstream. To make up for omissions in the humanistic syllabusI had volunteered also for an extra 3 hours per week physicscourse in the newly furnished physics laboratory of myschool. At the same time I was warned that to make asuccessful career in mathematics would require of me aconcentrated effort to the exclusion of many extracurricularactivities. At that time, and in later years too, I was notprepared for such sacrifice. The study of Greek hadawakened my interest in philosophy and I had decided tosubmit an essay on Plato’s Republic as part of my finalGreek examination, where regulations allowed such an essayto replace one of the Greek papers. I had also joined aphilosophy of religion study group led by Rabbi J Galliner, afriend and colleague of my father’s.Before the Nazi regime any school leaver with myqualifications would have applied to the German universityof his choice for admission in the summer term and beaccepted with a minimum of formality. I had of course madeenquiries which were the leading universities in the subjectsI wanted to study, and the general consensus was that themost exciting university at that moment was Göttingen. Atthe same time I was warned that I would not profit from thescientific atmosphere there before I had reached an advancedstandard in my studies. Berlin like many other Germanuniversities had an excellent reputation, and I should makemy mark in my undergraduate studies there first. After thefirst day of April 1933, the day before my 18th birthday andthe day of the boycott of the Jews, it became clear that mychances of being admitted in Berlin were minimal. I appliedfor admission to Berlin university as a kind of test and wastold that the question of admission of Jewish students had

10

not yet been decided on, but that in the meantime I couldattend lectures.I followed some well-delivered lectures in mathematicsgiven by a Dr Feigl and the basic lecture course in‘Experimentale Physik’ given by Professor Walther Nernst,the Nobel prize laureate and discoverer of the Third Law ofThermodynamics, who although a physical chemist held theprincipal chair of experimental physics. This lecture coursewas a great attraction for hundreds of students who attendedit not only in their first year, but returned year after year, forindividual lectures. There was Nernst pontificating not justabout physics, but about many general subjects from aconservative and often antifeminist point of view, but with agood sense of humour. He was held to the straight andnarrow by his assistant who for every lecture had preparedsome often brilliant demonstration experiments. In thecourse of two semesters the lectures would cover in basicoutline the principles of classical physics. However, my ownattendance at these lectures hardly lasted three weeks. I wastold to appear before the university’s political officer to bevetted before matriculation. This gentleman turned out to bean SS man in full uniform complete with revolver in itsholster who informed me that he would not let me, a Jew,proceed to matriculation. The result of the interview did notsurprise me, although I had not expected it would beconducted by an armed SS man who could have arrested methere and then and sent me off to a camp.Eight years later I told this story to a student reporter whointerviewed me for his Union paper on my appointment asTemporary Lecturer at Southampton University, then‘College’. Nothing gave me a greater insight into Britishattitudes than the reaction of this young man. I expected himto be outraged, but his reaction was a smile ofembarrassment. To him this, for me, tragic event seemedalmost like a music hall situation when school leaversapplying for a university place would be interviewed by anarmed SS man.

11

It was not long before the Jewish Gemeinde informed methat their small fund for support of students was exhaustedand also advised me to try my luck abroad. My uncle JuliusLehmann, my mother’s brother, then lived in Saarbrücken.This was the capital of the small territory which the treaty ofVersailles had provisionally separated from Germany,subject to a referendum to be held in 1935. Profiting fromthe separation of this territory, and therefore not subject toGerman legislation nor an integral part of the Germaneconomy, my uncle could carry on with his business and livewith his wife without restrictions. In fact the independenceof the territory had made him, instead of being merely anagent of some of the big German and Swiss insurancehouses, a director of an independent firm of insurancebrokers that handled the insurance business of those bigcompanies in the autonomous Saar region. They had nochildren and were able and willing to help their nephews andnieces caught up in the Nazi disaster. When he knew of mypredicament he immediately agreed to help and support mein my studies, which meant I could study abroad, if the costsof my studies were not too high.I had always wanted to go to Great Britain, ever since I hadread André Maurois’ biography of Disraeli, a book I wasgiven when I was thirteen on my Bar Mitzvah. I wascaptivated reading about his career, his speeches inParliament, the great debates with Gladstone, the waygovernments could be scrutinised in public and how apolitical party of the Right could be persuaded to adopt theone-nation idea. Maurois’ romantic biography was bound toimpress a young person like myself. I was fascinated by apolitical system that could enable a man like Disraeli toemerge and become prime minister of Great Britain, a man,who would be called an ‘Old Jew’ by the German chancellorBismarck when he encountered him at the Congress ofBerlin of 1878, and yet command his respect.In my enquiries about British universities I was told that inthe sciences and in mathematics Cambridge was the

12

outstanding university in Great Britain and therefore madeenquiries how to apply there. In Cambridge, one of theworld’s citadels of mathematics and science Lord Rutherfordand his school at the Cavendish Laboratory continued tomake important discoveries which fired a young man’sinterest and ambition. I had also considered going toStrasbourg, only about 120 km from Saarbrücken, but heardthat French government policy was not to allow me, aGerman national, to be a student in this city so near to theGerman frontier and in a province which Nazi Germany hadincluded in its territorial demands. On the other hand I heardthat studies at Cambridge would be costly, because fees andmaintenance expenses in Cambridge were high so that tostudy there would be far more expensive than in a provincialBritish, let alone German, university and might exceed thesums my uncle was willing to pay.

My uncle suggested that I should study in Vienna. I wouldhave no language difficulties there, living costs and feeswere affordable for him and I had an aunt, his and mymother’s sister, Johanna, in Vienna who in many ways couldhelp me. I was advised, too, that the teaching in Vienna wasgood and that if I hoped to do research in physics, as I did,there was no need to think of a university as famous asCambridge, or pre-Nazi Göttingen, until I had succeeded inmy undergraduate studies. So Vienna it was, and Cambridgeremained an unfulfilled dream.When I had turned my back on Berlin I heard that I wasleaving in distinguished company. I heard later that almost tothe day Professor Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Prize winnerand Professor of Theoretical Physics at Berlin, resentingNazi ideas and disgusted by their politics, had left theuniversity dropping a postcard in the porter’s lodge that read‘I am not coming back’. I believe his formal resignation wassent in much later.

13

Chapter 2 - Studies in Vienna amid

Political Danger

Vienna at that time was a place of fading glamour. When itwas the capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire it hadattracted brilliant persons, many of them Jewish, from all itsconstituent parts. Music, literature, painters, its scientists andengineers made it a scintillating capital of a large empire.But after the end of World War I in 1918 it was a capitalwith 1� million people of a small, German speaking countrywith a population of just over 7 millions. Good theatre andopera still existed, magnificent buildings, famous churchesand wonderful museums and art galleries were still to befound. But there was not enough capital to keep up Vienna’scultural inheritance at the same standard as pre-war. Famousproducers, actors, musicians and other intellectuals foundmore scope in Germany. The Jews remaining in Vienna afterthe World War still had some influence on the cultural life inVienna, but the more prominent ones, like Max Reinhardt,the famous Producer-Director, or Arnold Schoenberg, thecomposer, had emigrated to Germany before 1933. Thoseleft behind made a marginal impact, for instance by runningpolitical cabarets. Jews were finding it near-impossible toreach positions of influence in the judiciary, in academia,medicine or industry. As in Germany many, therefore, hadturned to the liberal professions as independent lawyers orgeneral practitioners of medicine. This professionalimbalance led, as in Germany, to an increase in antisemitismwhich in Austria had been endemic in a very virulent formsince its imperial days, but where under the Hapsburgsbaptism and assimilation had at least offered careerpossibilities for many Jews. This was no longer an effectiveway out of discrimination because racism regardedconverted Jews still as ‘non-Aryans’. There was a fairlystrong Nazi party in Vienna whose avowed goal was both

14

Jewish persecution and union of Austria and Germany, the‘Anschluss’, the adsorption of Austria to Germany. This dualaim very much appealed to a large part of the students, asmost students whether Nazis or not had an admiration forGerman Kultur and a yen to be part of a Greater Germany.Vienna University had much suffered from the break-up ofthe empire. It was still reasonably well funded and had someexcellent teachers, but it could no longer draw on theimmense hinterland of the empire for new talent. As in otherwalks of life brilliant young Austrian faculty members wereglad to accept positions in Germany where they had theopportunity of better careers.I knew before I had arrived in Vienna how unstable thepolitical situation was. When I told my friends in Berlin thatI was going to Vienna, they shook their heads. For themthere was no doubt of Hitler’s intention to annex Austria byAnschluss. The only question seemed to be when this wouldhappen.I realised that study in Vienna could only be a temporaryexpedient, but given my circumstances it was the onlychoice open to me. The signs that Austria would not remainan independent country for long were plainly visible when Iarrived, but for the moment Hitler considered that the timefor annexation was not ripe, and had given ‘assurances’ tothat effect. I just hoped that the Anschluss would not happensoon so that I had time at the university to prove my abilityin my chosen subjects of study, perhaps even complete mydegree course.When I arrived in Vienna in late spring of 1933 a clerical-conservative government was in power that would turnfascist. Facing the social-democratic party’s opposition onthe Left and the Nazi party on the Right it had dissolvedparliament and now ruled by decree. It was in fact adictatorship supported by the army and the church. Thesocial-democratic party, far more radical than the social-democratic party in Germany, had lost its influence innational politics, but still had power bases in the big cities

15

like Vienna and Graz. In Vienna the city administration wasrun by the social-democrats. These, unlike their Germannamesakes, were not only prepared, but willing to engage inarmed conflict with the government whose fascism appearedto them as of only a slightly different hue from that of theNazis. Naturally, because Austria had in effect a minoritygovernment the political situation was not stable. In themeantime, although few doubted the Nazis’ intention toeffect an Anschluss in the future, Hitler’s ‘guarantee’ toregard Austria as an independent German state seemed todistance him from the Austrian Nazis, who were clamouringfor an immediate Anschluss. The reason for this ‘guarantee’was to placate Mussolini. The Duce at that time refused tohave the German army at the Brenner frontier whichseparated Austria from what had been the pre-first-warAustrian South Tyrol with its large German speakingpopulation, but now under Italian rule. The question washow long Mussolini would feel strong enough to resist Hitlerand allow me to complete my studies.The omens that this could be even a medium term solutionwere not favourable. I soon realised that my move to Viennawould be only a short episode in the tangle of physics andpolitics that was to remain the scenic backdrop of my life.Immediately on arriving in Vienna I saw signs that mychoice of this university had been more foolhardy than I hadthought. There was evidence of a highly unstable situationthe very day I arrived in Vienna. On the previous day therehad been demonstrations by Nazi students. In the anatomydepartment they had attacked Jewish students and thrownthem bodily out the first floor laboratory into the street. TheNazis then unfurled a vast swastika flag which was stillhanging from the first floor window when I walked past it.The choice of the anatomy institute was deliberate. It wasnot only a demonstration against the large number of Jewishmedics of which in the opinion of right wing students therewere too many, but the director, Professor Tandler, was ofJewish extraction and a leading member of the strongly anti-

16

Nazi Austrian social-democrats. Professionally he waswidely known as a proponent of preventive medicine. Hehad achieved world wide attention by his reforms when incharge of the City of Vienna health department, whereamongst other schemes he had introduced free dental carefor school children.There were further disturbances that week created by theAustrian Nazis clearly designed to achieve a quick access topower. Almost immediately the government reacted bydeclaring the Nazi party illegal and, in order to preserve theuniversities from further Nazi disturbances, by suspendingall university lectures and by strengthening security witharmed police in the university and in other public buildings.The administrative offices were kept open and I now foundmyself at a university ready to matriculate me, but offeringonly empty classrooms for the whole of the summersemester. Nevertheless the physics and mathematicsinstitutes were open, and I could make some useful contactsand work out plans of study during the summer.

I faced further obstacles in my attempts to become a student.Hitler raged when the Austrian government outlawed theNazi party. I had come back to Berlin for the summer breakbetween semesters in August, and while I was there heimposed deterring restrictions on travel to Austria. Germanswanting to travel to Austria had to apply for an exit visafrom the German authorities obtainable only after paying thefor me exorbitant sum of 1000 Reichsmark. It seemed thatmy studies were over even before they had begun. My aunt,fortunately, found a way around. She had a friend in theGerman embassy, a diplomat of the old, pre-Nazi, schoolwho decided that as I had already officially began my studiesI could be regarded as resident in Austria and thereforeentitled to a visa issued by the German embassy in Viennawithout charge. He asked for my passport to be sent to him,and my despair was relieved when in spite of my darkest

17

premonitions I found an amended passport in my mail givingVienna as my residence and displaying the visa.That antisemitism in Austria was rampant and more rabidthan in Germany was clearly demonstrated by widelyreported incidents after the Anschluss. BBC televisionreports screened as late as 1996 have shown that the endemicantisemitism in Austria is still taking its time to fade away.The student body in Vienna, too, was on the whole moreracist than that in German universities, whereas in pre-Hitlerdays German antisemitism was strongly promoted mainly bythe ‘elite’ student Verbindungen (fraternities).The Austrian government outlawed Nazi student groups aswell as the Nazi party in 1934, but in the university oneknew only too well who was and who was not a Nazisympathiser, both among students and teachers. Antisemiticdiscrimination had been rooted in the university long beforeNazism. For instance I could not join the undergraduates’Mathematical Society, but only the ‘Allgemeine’ (General)Mathematical Society which accepted Jews andconsequently had an almost entirely Jewish membership.The university did not give us a meeting room as the othersociety had been allotted. We were allowed only to have acupboard in one of the corridors of the mathematics institutewhere we stored what we proudly called our library. Ourmeetings took place in classrooms which were momentarilynot occupied, and there we discussed tutorial problems. Thelatent antisemitism nevertheless would not prevent me fromattending courses and find some sympathetic lecturersproviding a stimulating atmosphere and real incitement towork.A new student would find that Vienna University wasconscious of its famous traditions and was determined tomaintain them. The mathematics department boasted somebrilliant members. I personally was impressed by ProfessorMenger and the brilliant teaching of Professor Furtwängler,but less so by one or two of his assistants. In experimentalphysics there were four full professors, and in theoretical

18

Physics there was Professor H Thirring also a brilliantteacher. There were, however, none of the big names, asthere were in German universities and in the German ‘KaiserWilhelm’, now renamed ‘Max Planck’ Institutes. Some ofthe professors had gained international recognition, but greatnames like Planck in Germany or other Nobel prizerecipients had been absent from Vienna for some time sincethe deaths in 1906 of Boltzmann and in 1916 of Mach, whowas born in what is now the Czech republic.Younger brilliant people like Lise Meitner, O Frisch and VWeisskopf went to Germany, Weisskopf, I think, beforeachieving his PhD. There was no work on nuclear physicsexcept in the Radium Institute where an important discoverywas soon to be made.Professor Ehrenhaft, a Catholic, but of Jewish extraction,was one of the four full Professors of Physics. He deliveredthe fundamental lecture course of ‘Experimentale Physik’ ina Viennese accent that had many Austrian-Jewishresonances. His extrovert mannerisms made some of thehypersensitive Jewish students feel self-conscious, but hislarge audience enjoyed the lectures that were packed withinteresting demonstration experiments. He was an excellentphysicist and showed this in his lectures which in aqualitative way opened up at least my understanding of thebasics of classical physics. The students gladly accepted thisintroduction to classical physics, but one knew that some ofhis ideas on contemporary atomic physics had stained hisreputation. He had put himself outside current thought inphysics by insisting that his later research provided evidencefor the existence of a fractional electronic charge, smallerthan e, the charge of the electron determined by Millikan andwidely accepted as the fundamental unit of electricity. Hisresearch ‘though had yielded other interesting results. LikeMillikan who had made important measurements in the fieldof viscosity enabling him to measure e, Ehrenhaft also hadmade discoveries in a field related to his research,electrophoresis. Here he had devised some very interesting

19

experiments which he continued during my time in Vienna.He ran a very fine laboratory and one felt that in spite of hisassumed posture he was becoming reconciled with the newphysics. He did not regard himself as Jewish, but whenyoung Jewish students later asked for his help in providingreferences for them abroad he proved himself supportive andfearless. The arrival of the Nazis in Vienna in 1938 meantfor him the destruction of his world and of the Vienna schoolof physics as he had idealised it. His personality had made itdifficult for him to gain friends abroad after he had beendismissed, and he died a bitter man.At the entrance of the ‘Boltzmanngasse’, a little streetleading past the entrance of the Radium Institute and thebacks of the physics and chemistry laboratories stood thestatue of Ludwig Boltzmann. Ehrenhaft told his studentswith some pride that it was due to him that the inscription onBoltzmann’s tombstone had consisted, apart fromBoltzmann’s name and dates of birth and death, of only thefundamental equation S = k InW connecting entropy S, itsprobability W and the ‘Boltzmann’ constant k named afterhim.

Professor H Thirring occupied the chair of TheoreticalPhysics, at one time held by Boltzmann. We understood thaton filling the chair of Theoretical Physics the university hadpreferred Thirring to Schrödinger. It was said that theUniversity realised it had made the wrong choice whenSchrödinger was awarded the Nobel prize. Yet whateverwere the university politics resulting in this appointment theundergraduates had no cause to complain. Thirring was abrilliant teacher whose 4-year course of theoretical physicscarried on the German and Austrian physics tradition ofexpecting all undergraduates, whether intending to beexperimentalists or theoreticians, to have a thoroughgrounding in theory. Roughly the syllabus was that outlinedin Joos’ ‘Theoretical Physics’, but Thirring went into greaterdetail, and the proseminars were just the right kind of

20

tutorials for undergraduates for learning how to solveproblems, whereas the seminars were at high postgraduatelevel. He was also a man who made no secret of his liberalviews, often pointing out that such political problems asstudents and the state regarded as important, faded intoinsignificance when seen on a cosmic scale where the earth,and certainly the state of Austria, could be regarded asminuscule. The Nazis did not regard him as one of theirs, buthe managed not to be dismissed when they came to power. Iwas not certain of the field and extent of his research, but heinfected all of us with his keenness on physics andon…skiing. His emphasis on the fundamental principlesgoverning physics was impressive. Examinees would bearwitness to his convictions when he was their examiner in thevivas, exams that could well go on for more than an hour andrange over the whole of physics. But such an examinationwould finish abruptly with the candidate’s failure if he or sheomitted to write down the minus sign in Maxwell’sequations, the four equations summing up electromagnetictheory.

One of the best lecture courses on atomic physics were givenby the physical chemist, Professor Hermann Mark. He andhis research group had a worldwide reputation gained by hiswork on polymers. His lectures were brilliant and crowdedout by both physics and chemistry students. His 4-semestercourse on physical chemistry began with lectures on atomicphysics. It was very much appreciated by physics studentswhose school syllabus had not included the Bohr-Rutherfordmodel. Physics students stayed loyally with him even whenhe lectured on applications of thermodynamics to chemistry.I certainly was impressed that one could actually calculatewhy a chemical reaction went from, say, right to left of theequation, a process one had ‘simply to learn and remember’at school. His high scientific achievements - and onepresumed his industrial connections - made him the onlyprofessor who could be seen driving an American Packard

21

car, often only to purchase cigars from the nearesttobacconist. He was popular with the undergraduates andfound time to come down into the first year laboratory tomeet and talk to the new undergraduates. He very kindlydemonstrated to me personally some fundamental reactionswhen he happened to see me, a mere physics undergraduate,in his teaching laboratory for which I had volunteered as anextracurricular activity. The Nazis soon dismissed him afterthe Anschluss as a descendent from a not racially ‘pure’forebear.

Another lecture course recommended to physics studentswas given by the philosopher Professor Moritz Schlick, theViennese positivist. It took place in one of the largerauditoriums in the main building of the university. Wephysicists found it difficult to arrive on time. Even runningat full speed after a Thirring lecture from theBoltzmanngasse to the university building at the Ring tookmost of us longer than the ten minutes allowed betweenlectures and would make us late. But what we could hear anddigest certainly was worth our while. To look at physicsfrom the outside, as this philosopher did, and to talk ofmodern physics and contemporary philosophy in a civilisedmanner, was in welcome contrast to the rantings and ravingsof the physics professors and Nobel laureates Lenard andStark in Germany. They were at that time the leadingopponents in German speaking countries of the still youngtheories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Physicsstudents in Austria as well as in Germany knew well thatLenard’s lecture on ‘relativity’ given at that time inHeidelberg consisted almost entirely of a diatribe against theJews and ‘Jewish’ physics as personified especially byEinstein. My brother who had been an undergraduate inHeidelberg a few years earlier confirmed to me thatProfessor Lenard’s lecture on relativity was the event of thesemester. It was packed out by right-wing students, not manyof them physicists, who screamed their approval every time

22

Lenard attacked ‘Jewish’ physics and Einstein. ProfessorStark’s remarks referring to Heisenberg as a ‘white Jew’,because Heisenberg did not reject relativity and relativisticquantum mechanics, have recently been reported again inPhysics Today.The positivist Schlick knew his contemporary physics andattracted many undergraduates who shared his disdain ofwoolly thinking. They appreciated this philosopher’sapproach to the recent discoveries, to Niels Bohr’s conceptof complementarity, to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principleand to the statistical aspect of modern physics. For me it wasrefreshing to see that views clearly denying racism andupholding progressive ideas could still be held and expressedfrom a Viennese academic pulpit in spite of the rising waveof Nazism in this German speaking country and in itsuniversities. But not for much longer. One year after Iattended his lectures Schlick was killed as he wasdescending the splendid staircase of the main universitybuilding by revolver shots fired by a right wing student. Inthose days the Austrian criminal law differentiated betweenplain murders and killings that had political motives whichcould carry a lesser penalty. Also right wing motives seemedto be regarded with more sympathy by the Austrian judiciarythan those of the left. The student was sentenced to twoyears and a half in prison. He was released after a short timeand no doubt qualified for acceptance by the SS after theAnschluss.

It is about that time that I decided to treat physics as myprincipal subject with mathematics as the subsidiary. I stillliked mathematics, but there were so many new and excitingthings happening in physics which attracted me. The newquantum mechanics was still developing fast. One of itsgreat successes had been the treatment of the hydrogenmolecule, by Heitler and London published in 1927. I wouldattend a seminar where we discussed the paper and the vistasit opened. Heisenberg came to Vienna and gave us a public

23

lecture which was crowded out. Nuclear physics seemed tohave entered a new stage. We heard that Fermi in Rome wasopening up the chapter of neutron physics. We heard of theexperiments in the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute by Hahnand Liese Meitner, who was Viennese by birth, andStrassmann. What could be more natural for a young studentthan wanting to get closer to these new frontiers of physics?In choosing physics as my main subject there was also apractical consideration. Should I not be good enough in theend to do research - and I did not want to teach - the onlyindustrial employment open to a mathematician was that ofan actuary whereas I knew that more and more industrieswere looking out for physicists. I would definitely prefer towork in industry rather than for an insurance company. Sincethere was little high technology industry in Austria I wouldhave to look for a country whose politics allowed me to enterand make my career as a physicist whether I was going to doresearch or work in industry.

While I was just beginning to settle down to my studies morepolitics interrupted life in Austria. The social-democrats andtheir military wing, the outlawed ‘Schutzbund’ decided uponthe armed revolt they had planned for a long time, and inFebruary 1934 they struck. The pre-arranged signal inVienna was that suddenly all trams in the street stopped.This was easily contrived as the workers controlled thegenerators. There was only little street fighting, butnevertheless after I had heard shots I saw for the first time inmy life a fatal casualty, a policeman’s body lying in thestreet. However, the Schutzbund failed to achieve supportfrom the population at large and to induce a general uprisingagainst the government. The government called out thearmy, the Schutzbund fighters retreated and concentratedmainly in or around the workers’ tenements in Vienna andother strong points like Graz.These workers’ homes, incidentally, had previously attractedworldwide architectural interest by town planners and served

24

as examples in the planning of workers’ flats. Twenty fiveyears later I would see for myself the Quarry Flats in Leeds,one of the largest estates ever built for workers, followingthe Vienna design experiment in town planning. Thisconcept was probably not the ideal approach to socialplanning. It was certainly not suitable for military purposesand failed when the Schutzbund tried to use these buildingsas fortresses. The Austrian chancellor Dollfus had nohesitation in bringing up artillery, and the shelling of theworkers’ tenements soon defeated the Schutzbund memberswho had sought this protection.

Hardly had the revolt been put down when in June 1934Dollfuss was murdered by a Nazi clique. This revolt wasimmediately suppressed. If there had been an intention bythe German army to intervene and support the rebels it waspoorly coordinated. The Germans hesitated, because onceagain Mussolini supported the Austrian government, thistime by demonstratively moving two divisions of his army tothe Brenner frontier. The government stayed in power underthe new leadership of Dr Kurt Schuschnigg.Studies in the university were surprisingly little affected bythe armed revolt of the socialist party, nor by the murder ofchancellor Dollfuss in 1934. Yet to a person like me whohad sadly experienced how non-democratic politics couldquickly lead to dangerous consequences it became clearerevery day that political stability in Austria, such as it was,was coming to an end. The government’s independent stanceagainst the Left and at the same time the Nazis could bemaintained only as long as Mussolini stuck to his refusal tosee German troops at the Brenner frontier. When Mussolinibegan to need German support for his Abyssinian war in1935 and saw the need for a strong German-Italian ‘axis’ thearrival of the German army in Vienna accompanied by theNazi storm troopers could not be delayed much longer. Yetmany Jewish students would not be as apprehensive as I wasand argued that the famous Viennese characteristic of

25

‘Schlamperei’ (sloppiness) would tone down Nazi policies inVienna. In the political cabarets the speakers would jest thatthe political situation in Vienna was desperate but notserious. Such Jewish emigration as took place at the timewas caused more by the unemployment situation in Austriaand the impossibility now to make tracks for Germany thanby political awareness of what seemed to me imminentdisaster. From that time on I always kept a packed suitcaseand a little money ready in my lodgings in case I had toleave Vienna in a hurry. Since I had a German passport, asyet not stamped with a ‘J’ for Jew, I felt I could easily crossone or other of the Austrian frontiers, perhaps into Italy, ifneed be. In fact the Nazis did not arrive till the beginning of1938, but the ever increasing danger of the German invasionmade me resolve to leave as little as possible to chance andcomplete my Dr Phil degree in the minimum of time. I wasalso under financial pressure. In 1935 the Saar territory’splebiscite came out in favour of reunion with Germany, andmy family there accepted the French government’s offer ofcitizenship and emigrated to France. My uncle promised tocontinue to support me as long as he could, but doubted hewould be able to do so much longer.

In spite of all these upheavals I could profit from theViennese cultural life. It was not a life as romanticised byViennese waltzes, but rather a life which one attempted tofill culturally as best one could, in my case by adopting a‘carpe diem’ attitude. My main choice was to take part asmuch as I could in Vienna’s musical life. Students couldobtain cheap tickets to concerts and had special concessionsin the Opera. Also there was a very high standard of musicmaking in private homes, principally of chamber music fromwhich I could profit and where I could join some generousfriends tolerant of my own violin playing. There were manyprivate music enthusiasts of really professional standard,exemplified by the Amadeus quartet formed later inEngland.

26

The earliest time possible to graduate for any candidate wasfour years after matriculation, which for me was the summerof 1937. I was fortunate in that university regulations inAustria as in Germany were flexible. They specified onlythat students could hand in their theses and proceed to thedoctor’s degree after showing proof that they had attendedlectures and tutorials (and laboratory classes in the case ofscientists) for a minimum of four years or eight semesters.There was no regulation preventing a candidate frombeginning research work for his doctoral thesis beforecompleting the minimum of lecture courses required. Whileit was not unusual to be accepted as research student shortlybefore the end of the four-year period I think I was one ofthe few who were accepted in a research laboratory afteronly four semesters, in effect three only, since the first hadbeen largely lost due to the suspension of classes.Standards both of the research and the candidate, although inphysics high on average, could vary widely. Other youngphysicists, some subsequently becoming famous, hadprofited from the tolerance of the university requirements forproceeding to the doctor’s degree and produced trulyremarkable research results before obtaining their degree.The regulations had allowed Pauli at the age of eighteen towrite the standard work on relativity and Heisenberg tocomplete his thesis when he was already ‘Assistent’ inGöttingen before his final examination for the doctorate.Incredibly, as Max Born told me later, Heisenberg nearlyfailed his viva because (Max) Wien, his examiner in Munich,had discovered gaps in his knowledge. Heisenberg hadapparently neglected reading about experimental physicswhile engaged on his advanced theoretical work.

In my case I applied and was accepted for research followinga searching interview by Professor Karl Przibram(pronounced pshibram). ‘Extraordinarius’, that is not full,Professor Przibram was deputy director of the Radium

27

Institute. This laboratory was part of the university, but hadbegun its existence as a separately funded institution afterthe discovery of the radioactive Pitchblende in Bohemia atthe beginning of the century. Bohemia then belonged toImperial Austria when the government had acquired a fairquantity of radium. This acquisition was vested in the newRadium Institute which eventually was incorporated in theUniversity. Professor Stefan Meyer, author of the standardwork in German on radioactivity and one time collaboratorof Marie Curie, was head of the institute. Professor Przibramhad worked in Cambridge at the Cavendish. Now hisresearch was concerned not so much with nuclear physics, aswith fluorescence, luminescence and colour centres incrystals. He used radium to irradiate crystals, ‘dope’ them intoday’s language, and then measure their properties. I was towork in this field which was becoming more and more partof the expanding research field of solid state physics. Hiswork was related to the experimental work carried on byPohl in Göttingen and the theoretical work of, amongstothers, Frenkel in Leningrad. I found this work interestingand was quite taken by Frenkel’s concept of ‘excitons’,another step into what were the beginnings of semiconductorresearch. Professor Przibram’s work had given him aninternational reputation in this chosen field. I think he wasone of the best active physicists in Vienna. He also gave anadvanced lecture course on modern atomic physics whichled right up to the latest research in that field. I very muchprofited from his lecture as I did from the Institute’s seminar.Also I remember that one of the Institute’s members had justreturned from Copenhagen and reported on the latest ‘stateof the art’, that is on papers given in Niels Bohr’s seminar.One of my reasons for applying to be a member of theRadium Institute was that I had hoped to do research innuclear physics, a field which was progressing rapidly andseemed more exciting to me than other physics. I had beenfollowing Professor Meyer’s lectures in radioactivity andsaw that many advances were happening in nuclear physics.

28

This field seemed fascinating to me, as probably to manystudents of my generation, and full of promise of impendingdiscoveries. Yet I was not going to do research in nuclearphysics. In fact I was very fortunate to be introduced toProfessor Przibram’s field of work, rather than work onnuclear physics problems. I discovered that in the Institutehis research was more in the forefront of physics than thenuclear physics work, with the exception of the work by DrsBlau and Wambacher and the nuclear-chemical work by DrRona, all women. Advances abroad in nuclear physics thenwere taking the new path mapped out by the experiments ofCockcroft and Walton in Cambridge, and Lawrence inCalifornia, all engaged in accelerator work.In essence I was in the same position as many other aspiringresearch students then as now. The professor would pick aproblem that interested him and ask the student to work onit. I remember particularly the first student I had myselfwhen I began cosmic ray experiments in Leeds. Thedepartment picked the most promising student they had, T.Shaw, and asked him to work with me. He had expressed apreference to work on a problem in meteorology. There wasnobody working in this field in the department, and Shawwas told that to work on cosmic rays, as it dealt with eventshigh in the atmosphere, was not too far removed fromweather problems (true only if one thinks of solar cosmicrays and sunspots) and he agreed to work with me. I was notpresent at that interview!Similarly in Vienna I did not work in nuclear physics forwhich I had expressed a preference. The only connection Ihad with the field of nuclear physics was that I had to useradium for irradiation of crystals of calcium fluorite andafterwards examine them optically. I was to measure theirabsorption spectrum at low as well as at room temperaturesand thus determine from this the change in the make-up ofits ions. Yet I was not disappointed by the choice of theproject, but very soon became interested in this problem thatwas part of the beginning of the important and large field of

29

semiconductor physics, and I would profit from learningexperimental techniques which were new to me. All thesame working in the Institute one could not help learningquite a bit of nuclear physics. I still wonder sometimeswhether I should not have stayed in the field ofsemiconductors, which was becoming very promising, ratherthan being starry eyed and aim at other goals which fromtime to time had caught my attention. My career might havebeen more successful and have avoided muchunpleasantness.

Professor Przibram was known to be a non-Nazi, but I didnot know until later that he was of Jewish extraction. I wasglad to hear after the war that he had managed to gounderground in Belgium after the Anschluss and that on hisreturn to Vienna, after Austria had regained itsindependence, was promoted to Ordinarius, i.e. fullprofessor. Conversely, interviewing me he had at first beenuncertain, judging from my appearance and my north-German accent, about my political views. These werematters one hesitated to discuss openly at that time. Howeverhis doubts about me were put to rest within a very short timeafterwards when he met friends of my aunt’s socially.I found the atmosphere and the work at the Radium Institutemost congenial in spite of the presence of Nazi sympathisersamong staff and students, but the tone was set by the twoprofessors Meyer and Przibram who were liberal in the bestsense of the word. The large number of women scientists inthe Institute was perhaps a further indication of the liberalattitudes of the Director and Deputy Director.

It was during my time at the Institute that a discovery wasmade in nuclear physics which made an impactinternationally after its publication in 1937 in theproceedings of the Vienna Akademie der Wissenschaftenand in Nature. Marietta Blau and her assistant, JWambacher, using radioactive sources had discovered the

30

technique of making the tracks of nuclear particles visible inphotographic emulsions and were able to examinesubsequent nuclear reactions. This technique was to becomea powerful tool in nuclear investigations world wide and alsoin cosmic ray research. It extended significantly the range ofnuclear techniques available at the time and opened up a vastfield of investigations, such as those to be carried out by C FPowell and his collaborators in Bristol and by other groups.Blau had to escape from Austria after the Anschluss and wasnever able again to obtain a post commensurate with herachievement in Vienna. On the other hand Wambacherwould be quite enthusiastic when the Anschluss happenedlater, and gain high honours under the Austrian Nazi regime.In my last year in Vienna I was present at the meeting of theAkademie when the two ladies were presented with awardsfor their work. We all realised that the Institute had achieveda breakthrough in nuclear physics which had been long incoming since its early days.In another room Dr Rona, a chemist, was carrying out herwork on radioactive tracing following in the footsteps of vonHevesy and Paneth, a former member of the Institute. She,too, had to leave Austria. Otto Frisch, like I one ofPrzibram’s research students, had preceded me by a fewyears and had left Vienna before I arrived. I only met him 20years later in England.-The Institute was reasonably well equipped, but safetyprecautions such as they were, or the lack of them, would notsatisfy today’s regulations in nuclear research. The radium,to which my crystals were exposed overnight, probably was‘secure’ enough in a small safe in a special room, althoughsuch procedures would be doubtful today. However, I didthink even then that other practices certainly were not safeneither for the workers in the Institute nor for the worldoutside. For instance I was told not to attempt anyelectrometer measurements on a Tuesday which was the daywhen the institute was ‘aired’ by opening most of thewindows so that the Radon gas could escape! This in spite of

31

evidence presented in Professor Meyer’s book on thedangers of close contact with radium and its relatedradioactivity. It showed a photograph of the author’sforefinger which was partly eaten away where he used tohold test tubes containing radioactive solutions and anotherphotograph of the diseased mouths of women who had beenlicking their brushes containing pitchblende paints beforeusing them on watch dials.

From the day of my acceptance I practically lived in theInstitute, except to go to lectures, both basic and advanced.My first task was to design a crystal holder that could becooled and be small enough to fit into a narrow gap of amonochromator. The latter was hand-operated and nothinglike one of the state-of-the-art computerised spectrumanalysers in use today, but I could take it to pieces and reallysee how it worked. The final experimental arrangement Iused was my first design effort and at the time seemed ofsufficient general interest to deserve publication in mysubsequent paper in the Proceedings of the ViennaAkademie. The long runs of my apparatus necessary tocollect sufficient data fitted in well with my reading andpreparations for tutorials. It also meant that many a time Icould not leave the laboratory until the early hours of themorning. All the same I did find time to talk to other peoplein my and other laboratories and also have some time forextracurricular activities.I soon found that physics was a sociable science in the sensethat progress depended on talking to other people, both tolearn from them and to sharpen one’s own thoughts whiletrying to express them. I had many talks with my next roomneighbour, Dr F Urbach, a very gifted man who had workedfor some time as a hospital physicist. He told me that then hehad missed making an important discovery, and had onlyrealised this when the Joliot-Curie couple published theirfamous paper describing ‘artificial radioactivity’. He hadseen this effect, but never bothered to think about it deeply.

32

In his hospital radium needles were put into smallcontainers, then applied to parts of patients’ bodies and afteruse returned for safe storage. He had discovered that theempty containers had become radioactive, but had neverrealised the significance of this discovery. This story mademe think more deeply of how the genius of a scientist wouldrecognise a new breakthrough in unusual experimental data,and conversely of the many instances where scientists wouldlet pass new data and not see their importance. I witnessedsuch an incident years later, when in Manchester thediscovery of a large solar flare was missed by a graduatestudent and his supervisor. Again when in the 1970's I hadobtained unusual results, they did not signify a newdiscovery, but later turned out to be caused by a malfunctionof our apparatus. I did publish them, but at the same timealso published my reservations.In the Institute Urbach was working with an engineer onphosphorescent materials that responded to infrared light.They hoped, and they eventually succeeded, to develop anight sight for military purposes. They had been in touchwith the military attaché of the British embassy because theywanted to let the Western powers profit from their invention,but there had been no interest shown by the embassy.Eventually they obtained funding from Siemens. Just beforethe outbreak of war when I was in Edinburgh I had adesperate letter from Urbach asking me to find out whetherhis work on the infrared night sight might be of interest toBritain and possibly facilitate his entry into this country.Being Jewish he wanted to leave Vienna as soon as possible.Professor Born did make enquiries, but could not obtain apositive reaction helpful to Urbach, his wife and young son.I never heard from him again and feared the worst. Onlyrecently I learned that he had managed to gain entry to theUS and obtain a responsible position as an infraredspecialist.Urbach was perhaps ten years older than I was and verywilling to pass on some of his experience to me. He advised

33

me to read Born & Jordan’s book on quantum mechanics,published in 1930, adding that a previous occupant of myroom, V Weisskopf, had read this book within a week,decided that theoretical physics was the subject for him andalmost immediately after left the laboratory for Göttingen. Idid enjoy reading the book as well as H A Kramers’ book,but decided that I would continue with my experiment,hoping that after receiving my degree there would be time tostudy theory in greater depth.I had some good fortune with my experiment. Within two orthree weeks after getting my apparatus to work I discovereda temperature-irreversible effect in my crystal after itsexposure to Radium. It seemed that this induced changecould form the central point of my thesis, although I wouldhave to spend almost two years thereafter making detailedmeasurements and collect sufficient data and of course thinkhard about its interpretation. Thus almost from the beginningof my experimental work I did not have to worry aboutachieving publishable results required for my thesis. In factthe main results of my research were published in theProceedings of the Vienna Akademie der Wissenschaftenbefore my viva for the Dr.Phil degree.

During my last year, 1936/7, I had applied with ProfessorPrzibram’s support to the International Student Service forhelp in finding a place in a university in Great Britain andfor a grant. I hoped to do some postgraduate work intheoretical physics, preferably in Cambridge where I hadheard Max Born, who had built up a world famous postgraduate school in Göttingen, was now working. It seemed awonderful dream, if only I could join his new group and bein Cambridge. The reply I received from ISS, theInternational Student Service, now the World UniversityService (WUS) while friendly, was disappointing in manyways. I was told first of all that Professor Born had just leftCambridge and accepted a chair in Edinburgh, secondly thatwhile the Service was sympathetic to my case they had

34

hardly any funds left. The main batch of refugee studentsfrom Germany had come to England in 1933, just afterHitler’s assumption of power. Most of the funds of the ISSallocated for German refugee students had been used up sothat little was left for late comers like myself. They were,however, willing to support me to the best of their abilityand offered me a grant of £50, provided I could find anothersource of aid bringing the total up to £100. This sum was,they reckoned, the minimum a research student wouldrequire in Edinburgh, where expenses and fees were muchlower than in Cambridge. The offer was subject to ProfessorBorn’s willingness to accept me as a researcher. I alsoreceived a letter from Edinburgh University confirming thatmy qualifications were such that the university would acceptme as a research student. Max Born’s reaction to myprofessor’s recommendation was less than enthusiastic. Hestated that he would prefer a fully trained theoreticalphysicist as assistant, rather than a raw research student whowas only a beginner in theoretical physics. I decided that inspite of this set back I would pack my bags and go to Britainafter graduating even without financial assurances. It was adesperate leap, but with the Anschluss threatening andHitler’s increasingly threatening attitude towards France,Edinburgh University’s letter could help me to enter Britain.

During my last few weeks in Vienna, in September 1937,pro-Anschluss demonstrations had increased. But I thought itwas safe to wait one more week after obtaining my degree. Iwanted to take part in a boat race for which my club hadentered and not let my fellow crew members down. We lost.At night I took the train West. Just before the train pulled outI saw my friend Koczy race up. Seeing me at the last minutehe pressed a book into my hands, a sign of friendship I neverforgot. Koczy himself would leave Vienna soon. He was notJewish but detested Nazism and went to Sweden. Eventuallyhe would accept a chair in Florida. I never saw him again,but we kept in touch through his friend K Hoselitz who also

35

left Vienna and would make a distinguished career in thiscountry.

On my way West I stopped over in Strasbourg where myuncle and aunt were now living after becoming Frenchcitizens. They seemed to be in dire straits financially,because a new business my uncle had attempted to start hadbeen unsuccessful. There was nothing to keep me in Franceand I continued on my way. Five months after my leavingVienna, in March 1938, the German troops entered Austria,but by that time I was in Scotland.

36

Chapter 3 - Permission To Land In

Britain

The gates of the United Kingdom were not wide open topeople like me. After Hitler’s access to power in 1933restricted numbers of refugees were admitted by Britain.They were mainly people, including students, who couldshow they had sufficient means and would not be a burdenon state funds. Later a selected number of refugees wereadmitted if vouched for by organisations like Churches, theJewish Refugees Committee, the Czech Trust Fund orothers. A few selected members of the medical professionwere accepted, as were certain sponsored individuals. Justbefore the outbreak of World War II the British Governmentwould make some generous concessions from which moreadult refugees from Hitler and a good number of childrenwould benefit.Most of the refugee students had come directly to GreatBritain at the time I had gone to Vienna. I still regret that Ihad taken what appeared to me then an easy access to studiesand gone to Vienna, instead of trying my utmost to go toBritain. When I came to Britain in October 1937 I was seenas a late struggler without funds and I could hope to begranted ‘leave to land’ only if somehow I could obtainfinancial support.

To this day, whenever parliament or the press mention thewords immigration or asylum, I am reminded of my ownexperience. I disembarked from the ferry at Newhaven veryearly one foggy morning in October 1937 and faced H M’sImmigration Officer. He stays in my memory with hisphysique of a large policeman, serious and to the point. Afterreplying to his first question establishing that my Englishwas adequate for his purpose he asked me point blankwhether I was a refugee. If I replied ‘no’ this would

37

automatically brand me as a German and probably as a Nazi.If ‘yes’ I might be refused admission, because by that timeBritain’s doors were practically closed to refugees fromGermany. When I hesitated he asked me whether I couldreturn to Germany if I had to or wanted to. I then replied thatalthough I had a German passport my residence marked in itwas Austria and that I could return there after completing mystudies in Edinburgh. I also showed him my letter ofacceptance from Edinburgh University. I do not think that hehad any doubts about my real situation. I even thought that Icould detect the hint of a smile. He stamped my passportgiving me leave to land and two weeks to apply to the HomeOffice for an extension of this period for the purpose ofstudy.

I had an introduction to Mr Eric Turk, a great benefactor andsupporter of Jewish refugees. Within hours of my arrival inLondon he received me, arranged for me to be interviewedby the Jewish Refugees’ Committee in Woburn House, andbefore noon I was registered as Jewish refugee, No 10521.While this number refers only to Jewish refugees, otherorganisations, for instance the Quakers, also sponsoredrefugees so that this number is only an indication of theorder of magnitude of refugees admitted to Great Britainbetween spring 1933 and October 1937. In my case therewas also the question of my professional status. I was nolonger a school leaver hoping to commence the studies I hadbeen prevented from following in Germany. Nor was I anestablished scientist, medic, any other professional ordisplaced businessman claiming refuge. I just had a firstdegree, albeit with some research experience and with onepublication to my credit.

With this in my baggage I applied for a grant from theJewish Refugee’s Committee with which I hoped tosupplement the conditional grant promised by theInternational Students Service. In retrospect the Committee

38

did not run a great risk in supporting me, since later on Iwould repay the grant with generous interest. However, I hadan almost disastrous interview when I applied to theCommittee. I was seen by a gentleman who seemed to havebeen a High School teacher at one time. He was first of allunconvinced that my uncle, although now a refugee himself,was unable to support me further. Also he seemed to thinkthat my qualifications were not adequate, because hesuddenly gave me a test in high school mathematics. Notexpecting this I completely froze, and then only justremembered some of the relevant equations of my fourthyear school mathematics which I suppose I should havereeled off, and in fact could as soon as I had left the room. Igot up to leave, but on opening the door to walk out hadenough presence of mind to turn round. I asked him whether,if Professor Born in Edinburgh was satisfied with myqualifications, his Committee would support me. He seemedto think it unlikely that I should satisfy Professor Born, butagreed that in this case he would recommend to theCommittee to give me a grant. One element in my favourwas that the Committee’s policy was to encourage refugeesnot to congregate in the London area, and my wish to go toScotland seemed to meet with his approval.I spent the rest of the day visiting other people to whom Ihad introductions and at Imperial College I met TrudeScharff, later Professor Scharff-Goldhaber, and ProfessorPaneth with whom I sent joint greetings to ProfessorPrzibram on a picture postcard featuring the ScienceMuseum.

My brother Henry and I had been members of the LiberalJewish Youth movement in Germany. Henry was its leaderbefore emigrating to the United States. His work for Jewishyouth at a time when oppression for them increased day byday had impressed a visiting delegation of American Jewishleaders. They highly recommended him as a deserving caseto be granted an immigration visa to the USA outside the

39

quota. He left for the United States in 1937 only when it wasimpossible for him to continue his work for young Jewsbecause of increasing restrictions and when all efforts ofJewish agencies were directed to facilitating emigration.He and I, the sons of a progressive rabbi were known toLady Lily Montagu, one of the founders and a pillar of theLiberal Jewish movement in England. She had agreed to seeme. I remember being led into a large room in her housefacing Hyde Park and being almost overawed by herpresence. She was sitting with her sister Marion at a desk onwhich there were two telephones and some files and papers.The desk was on a raised platform so that I had to addressher from a physically inferior position. I learned later thatshe had conducted hundreds of interviews in this room, allconnected with her tireless work for many social causes, ofwhich work for refugees was only one. I made her smilewhen in reply to her question about my plans I answered inmy imperfect English I intended to become a ‘fellow’thinking that this was the lowest rung of the academicladder. I hoped then that she would support my applicationto the Jewish Refugees Committee. She certainly seemedvery sympathetic to my case. From then on I stayed in touchwith her for many years mainly through my membership ofthe Liberal Synagogue which I would join. Later on both mywife and I would participate in the conferences of the LiberalJewish World Union of which she would become President.Yet at the end of my second day in London my future inGreat Britain did not seem any more definite than on myarrival, and my travel money was running out. I decided tosee Professor Born without further ado, and in the eveningtook the night train to Edinburgh arriving at Waverleystation after a practically sleepless night. I made my way toBorn’s department in the university and was told to wait forthe professor’s arrival.

40

Chapter 4 – Theoretical Physics in

Britain, A New Discipline – The

Contribution of Refugees

Edinburgh University had been fortunate to find that MaxBorn, presently at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge,was still looking for a chair after leaving Göttingen and aftera short term professorship in India. Conversely it was anopportune moment for Born that C G Darwin’s chair waitedto be filled. He, Charles Darwin’s grandson, had been one ofthe two professors of ‘Natural Philosophy’ at Edinburgh.The first was held by C G Barkla, the experimental physicistand Nobel laureate. Darwin’s was the chair of AppliedMathematics. There were not many chairs in physics inGreat Britain, let alone vacant ones. A foreigner, as Bornthen was, was unlikely to be appointed to suchprofessorships, unless he was world famous in the subject, aqualification Born largely possessed. The University waswell aware not only of Born’s own fame, but also that of hisgraduate school in theoretical physics in Göttingen beforethe Nazis came to power. With his appointment it intendedto lay the foundations of a new graduate school in Edinburghand thereby strengthen theoretical physics in Scotland.In fact before 1930 the concept of theoretical physics as anindependent discipline was new in Britain, unlike inGermany or Holland or Denmark, and not accepted by manyBritish physicists. Whereas in the 1920's and 30's there was avery broad advance of theoretical physics on the continent,chairs in Britain in theoretical physics did not even exist.Brilliant individuals like P A M Dirac or R H Fowler wouldoccupy chairs of Mathematics or, in Scotland, chairs ofNatural Philosophy. E C Stoner would have to wait a longtime in Leeds to be offered a personal chair. Experimental

41

physicists, like C G Barkla at Edinburgh, even declared thatthere was no such animal as a theoretical physicist, but onlyphysicists and mathematicians. Had not Rutherfordsucceeded in treating �-decay without the help of advancedmathematics? At the time I arrived in Britain theexperimenters’ suspicions of theorists had just been furtheraroused by the episode of Sir Arthur Eddington’s newtheory. Eddington had become world famous asmathematician, astronomer and astrophysicist. He was oneof the first to recognise the value of Einstein’s relativitytheory and made his own contributions to it. In astrophysicshe had done outstanding work on the constitution andevolution of stars. When I arrived in Edinburgh he had justmade a foray into quantum mechanics and atomic physicsusing a philosophical and epistemological approach. Thetheoreticians I met at the time, however, strongly criticisedhis theory. In this he had stipulated that Sommerfeld’s finestructure constant � = 1/137 could be derived by purespeculation without recourse to experiments, although thisconstant was a combination of the measurable quantities ofthe electronic charge e, Planck’s constant h and the velocityof light c. In rejecting Eddington’s dogmatic approachphysicists, like W Heitler, also took some satisfaction inpointing out that the measured value of the constant was notexactly 1/137 as stated by Eddington. When I arrived inBritain Eddington’s theory was much attacked.All the same British theoretical physics began to advance,supported by Nevill Mott, R H Fowler and the seminalcontribution of the refugee theoreticians, and resistance tothis new discipline differing from mathematics began tocrumble. Much progress, ‘though slow, was due totheoreticians like N Kemmer in Cambridge and Max Born,first in Cambridge and then in Edinburgh, W Heitler and RPeierls. All inspired a younger generation, including HomiBhabha, Freeman Dyson and Abdus Salam. Heitler, while inCambridge for a short time, wrote his fundamental book onthe theory of radiation which was followed soon by a second

42

edition. However he was unable to find a permanent post inBritain, and after a short spell in Dublin accepted a chair inZurich after the war. On the other hand a farsighted Oliphantin Birmingham induced Rudolf Peierls to accept a chair in‘theoretical physics’ and soon after, in 1938, Chadwick inLiverpool appointed Maurice Pryce to a readership intheoretical physics and replacing him, after he moved on, byH Fröhlich. Also in the thirties, G P Thomson had appointedM Blackman, a theoretician, at Imperial College, and a chairwas found for Harrie Massey in the physics department ofUniversity College London.

The appointment of Pryce in preference to the refugeescientist Fröhlich, for instance, showed that the refugeescientists did not find it easy to settle in British universities.This appointment was much discussed at the time, but I donot think it was a case of antisemitism or prejudice againstforeigners. Pryce was a brilliant young man, highlyrecommended by the theoreticians in Cambridge, and I amsure there were reasonable grounds for preferring him. Ofcourse refugees were not expected, and on occasions activelydiscouraged by their agency (the ‘Academic AssistantCouncil’, later named ‘The Society For The Protection ofScience and Learning’) from applying for posts which couldbe filled by up and promising young British scientists. Thiswas done to avoid prejudice against Jewish and otherrefugees who should not be seen to hinder the careers ofyoung British scientists in a restricted labour market, such asexisted in Britain and in particular in the universities. Inexperimental physics, and this situation affected me becauseI still regarded myself as an experimentalist even after mywork with Born, there were more posts, but there was also anample supply of young British physicists in spite of the lowsalaries offered to them. The exception here was Oxford.Professor Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, attracted theexperts in low-temperature physics, Professor Simon and hiscollaborators, all Jews from Breslau. He intended to build up

43

the Oxford physics graduate school which had beenlanguishing under his predecessor. Lindemann had himselfbeen studying in Germany and was aware of the success ofGerman graduate schools and how Britain could profit froma transplant of refugee scientists. It was this country’s goodfortune that he, as Lord Cherwell, became Churchill’spersonal scientific advisor in 1940 contributing much to thegovernment’s growing realisation that British Science had tobe expanded.As in academia British industry also had only few openingsfor established Jewish physicists, so that here again refugeescientists were disadvantaged. An additional impediment forrefugees was that much of industry was increasinglyengaged on defence work and was not comfortable with thethought of employing ‘German’ nationals. This situationchanged, however, after the outbreak of war when thecountry found that there was simply not sufficient scientificman or woman power available for the war effort.

P Hoch in his survey in the Annals of Science of 1983 showsthat the number of refugee scientists who found academicposts in this country was small before the war. Eventually,however, Britain would profit considerably from her gain ofthose refugees of Jewish extraction or of opponents ofNazism who overcame resistance to their employment. Theyestablished themselves in Great Britain and contributedsignificantly to Britain’s science. The list of British Nobellaureates during the 25 years or so after World War II inphysics, chemistry and the medical sciences of about 25contains 7 names of former refugees, most of whom hadfound it difficult at first to obtain a tenured position inacademia, a situation further improved when British sciencebegan to expand. The continent’s loss was Britain’s gain.In Göttingen the famous graduate school in theoreticalphysics had practically disappeared. The little German Stadtwhose scientific past once included the names of Gauss and

44

Weber, where at one time Hilbert had taught mathematics -and until 1933 R Courant - and to where quite recentlystudents from all over the world had flocked, was no longer‘the’ outstanding centre of mathematics or physics. Over aperiod of time Born’s colleagues and friends in Göttingenhad included von Neumann and Hermann Weyl. Theyounger generation in the Göttingen seminars had includedsuch names as Heitler, the brothers London, Wigner andPauli, Landau and Oppenheimer, who gained his doctoratethere, and many other famous names. Of theexperimentalists figures like James Franck and von Hippel,not a Jew, left Göttingen.Pohl and his followers remained in Göttingen, failing likethe vast majority of German academia to make a standagainst Nazism. They were accepting it without demurring.Debye often said to be an opponent of the Nazis indeed leftGermany to accept a chair in the Netherlands, but Born toldme that he held racist views. Nevertheless in the end Debyepreferred to work in the US. Sommerfeld retired from hischair in Munich, but Heisenberg chose to stay at his post inLeipzig. He eventually felt quite comfortable in Germanyand survived attacks upon himself and on his support ofmodern physics. According to recent reports in PhysicsToday his mother pleaded for him with Himmler’s motherwhom she knew and who persuaded Himmler to protectHeisenberg.

Hoch describes in detail the immense loss to Europe ofscientists threatened by or simply disgusted by Nazism. Italylost Fermi. He never returned to Italy after collecting hisNobel price in Sweden. He went straight to the UnitedStates. Bohr who was partly of Jewish extraction was forcedto flee Copenhagen shortly after the German invasion ofDenmark, and so went of course Einstein and a galaxy ofother famous men and women. The majority of the Europeanrefugee scholars went to the United States. There they wouldmake outstanding contributions to the development of

45

theoretical physics, together with American physicists manyof whom had come at some time under the influence of theformer Göttinger School or of Sommerfeld’s former studentHans Bethe.Many more refugee scholars would have liked to stay inBritain and especially so in world-famous Cambridge wherea vital part of the British science graduate work wasconcentrated. Even though funding for science had increasedsomewhat before the war, there were just too few vacancies.It is not realised today how much British universities wereunderfunded at the time, regrettably a recurring situation. AtCambridge scientists even joked about their ‘string andsealing wax’ apparatus, a back-handed boast implying thattheir outstanding results could be and had been achievedwith a very small capital expenditure. They and the newgeneration of scientists nevertheless realised that in spite ofthe achievements of Rutherford and his school this lack ofadequate investment would hinder rapid progress of scienceand technology in Britain. Max Perutz’ work could befunded only because W L Bragg succeeded in obtainingAmerican money for his research. One is tempted to make acomparison with today’s film industry where, when a film ismade by a British director and British actors but withAmerican money, the film is regarded as American. By thesame token Perutz’ discoveries could be regarded as anAmerican achievement.The real causes of the slow absorption of refugee academicswere fundamentally the small number of universities, theirsmall size and the small number of posts for scientists inmany of them. The underfunding of British universities andespecially of science was based partly on the still lingeringbelief that the tradition of the amateur scientist, like Joule orCavendish, spending his private fortune on research hadbeen shown to be successful and should not be lost.Although Cambridge, for example, was beginning to attractgovernment money, state funds for research as existed on thecontinent were still slow in forthcoming in Britain. I have

46

seen a letter in the archives of Leeds University writtenbefore the first World War by W L Bragg’s father, W HBragg, applying to the Registrar for a grant of £100 tocontinue his research in X-ray crystallography. In it hemodestly suggested his project could be valuable and bringcredit to the University.Academic underemployment, paucity of posts and generalunderfunding seems to be a cyclic bane of British scienceand Higher Education. Naturally this can result periodicallyin discrimination against outsiders. One cannot but admirethe heroic effort in the mid-1930’s by British scientists andother public figures who believed in academic freedom andwere motivated by the highest humanitarian principles insupporting refugee scholars in British academe, in industryand in the few research associations, for instance the CottonResearch Institute in Manchester or the Wool ResearchInstitute in Leeds. They fought hard to convince a not alwaysempathic public opinion of the validity of their ideals and ofthe value of the refugees and their talents to Britain. Aidorganisations like the International Student Service, now theWorld University Service, and the Academic AssistanceCouncil worked ceaselessly to overcome difficulties andoften prejudice. Much tribute in this regard has been paid tothe then Professor A V Hill, later Lord Hill, and my personalexperience compels me to mention Sir Nevill Mott and SirEdmond Whittaker.Here it is only fair to point out that even without Hitler’sascent to power engendering the refugee situation manyscholars of Jewish descent would have had difficulties inestablishing themselves in German (and some otherEuropean) universities. The existing climate there washostile to them, because the Weimar republic had made verylittle change to the conservative German university systemand its endemic antisemitism, both among staff and students.Born, when in Göttingen, had to take care not to offend hiscolleagues’ sensitivities by appointing ‘too many’ Jewishassistants, let alone tenured staff.

47

There was at first some resistance, especially in theAmerican South, to the employment in higher education ofJewish refugees, but contrary to the British experience newmoney for expanding higher education was found morereadily in the United States, commencing with the funding ofa new type of institution in Princeton. This was sparked offafter Einstein’s arrival in the United States, when there wassimply no research chair available of sufficient standingwhere Einstein’s work could be continued and new brilliantyoung researchers could benefit from his unique influence.Thus Einstein’s arrival marked a change of attitude andgenerated a new impetus by the creation specially for himand his followers of the Institute of Advanced Studies atPrinceton. It indicated an American willingness to find newmoney for brilliant scholars. Einstein himself encouragedfurther expansion in America and also helped in placingrefugee scholars. It is largely due to his presence thatAmerican public opinion began to realise that there were agood many brilliant European scientists who should beabsorbed in America not just to give them refuge, butbecause their symbiosis with American science could profitthe US immensely. I understand that Einstein’s presencehelped to overcome antisemitism in many other universitiesin the United States.It is interesting to note that support for science reflects thegeneral, seemingly cyclic, attitude towards science and itssocial impact. The specific refugee aid problem and theefforts to find posts for them must be seen against a general,but only momentary, background of stagnation in physics inmany countries just before the war. There was a feeling thatthe enormous and wide ranging discoveries by Rutherfordand his school, by Ernest O Lawrence in California, by theEuropean theoretical physicists and many others had broughtphysics to a halt. In one of his lectures after the war I heardPeierls describe the atmosphere at the Solvay Congress in1933. There many members thought that physics hadreached a ‘final’ stage, such that the advances made lately

48

had left hardly any problems to be solved! With the help of‘constants’, as for instance conductivity, many thought thatthe whole of the physics could be adequately described bythe new quantum mechanics. It was Peierls in fact whopointed out that there was no present finality, but that such‘constants’, too, had to be understood and calculated. Anindication of the feeling of the completeness of physics wasthe symbolic attempt at codification, namely the publicationof the Handbuch der Physik by the Springer Verlag, Berlin,with Volume XXIV appearing in 1933. Yet this view of aterminal physics was soon contradicted by the appearance ofthis ‘last’ volume splitting into two very large ones, XXIV, 1and XXIV, 2. From time to time such grotesque moments ofdoubt are repeated in the history of physics. In Germany theanecdote was circulating that Planck was advised byProfessor W Wien at the end of the 19th century not to takeup physics, because he thought most problems in physicshad found their solutions.

Max Born in Edinburgh was now ‘Tait Professor of NaturalPhilosophy’. As such he was head of the Department ofApplied Mathematics. Barkla who occupied the first of thetwo chairs in Natural Philosophy had won the Nobel prize in1917 for his X-ray work confirming experimentally the shellstructure of the atom. He was engaged in work examiningwhat could in his opinion possibly be a ‘J-effect’ for whichhe thought he had found some evidence. The label ‘J’ woulddenote the existence of an atomic shell closer to the nucleusthan the K shell, hence ‘J’. Although the Bohr-Rutherfordmodel was by then firmly established, several Ph D theseshad emerged from Barkla’s laboratory in the 1920's-1930'sdisplaying, but others failing to establish, evidence of thiseffect.There were other small research groups, one led by JamesPaton, measuring aurora effects in a station in the ScottishHighlands, another by Dymond measuring cosmic rays in

49

balloon flights - and I and others would later have to get upbefore daybreak to help launching the balloons. There wasMarion Ross, one of the few women physicists active inresearch who only after the war was promoted to areadership after being held up by what she thought was anti-feminine prejudice and Childs, the radio expert, soon to beengaged on vital war work, as well as some researchassistants. Born’s predecessor, C G Darwin had doneimportant work in quantum mechanics. He had reigned insplendid isolation and had not created a research school.Robin Schlapp was the only other tenured member of Born’sdepartment, a very fine theoretician who had done excellentresearch work, some with Slater in the US, but who wasalmost totally submerged in his teaching and departmentalduties. This was in the tradition of the ancient Scottishsystem so well known from Lord Kelvin’s days where theProfessor made the famous discoveries, and the assistant didmost of the teaching and really ran the department andmaking a good job of it. Glasgow’s students were glad whenthe assistant, a Mr Day, lectured to them on the frequentoccasions when (the then) Sir William Thomson was absent.Conversely when the almost deaf Kelvin gave his, tedious tothem, lectures they prayed, it is said, to be relieved from the(K)night and for the arrival of Day.Against the background of scepticism at the time oftheoretical physics exemplified by Barkla’s views, it was notsurprising that Born had to fight when he wanted to changethe name of his ‘Department of Applied Mathematics’ to thatof ‘Theoretical Physics’. Well after my arrival in 1937 theconcession was made of adding a bracket altering thedepartmental name to ‘Department of Applied Mathematics(Mathematical Physics)’. Yet the teaching of undergraduatesin the department in which I was soon to be involved asdemonstrator still remained very far removed from the kindof theoretical physics taught in Germany or Austria,exemplified by Joos’ ‘Theoretical Physics’, or published inSommerfeld’s volumes on theoretical physics, or those

50

published later by Landau and Lifschitz. The teaching wasvery much based on the books by Lamb and by Ramsaypreparing students for the Cambridge tripos. Born thoughtthey were not suitable for the training of theoreticalphysicists, but that they were devised for training students inmathematical ways, ‘tricks’ as he called them. In his viewthey would not teach undergraduates to open their eyes tothe real physical world. Since most of the problems wereformulated in two dimensions and demanded only simplifiedmathematical approaches they did not equip experimentalphysicists either. Graduates trained in the departmentwanting to be theoretical physicists would need extra tuitionat the postgraduate level before they were qualified to doresearch and would easily be discouraged from taking up thesubject. High flyers would of course be willing to continue,but the need in Britain for a larger body of broadly qualifiedtheoreticians would not be met by this teaching of appliedmathematics. He clearly foresaw and would identify thisneed in his address to the British Associations meeting in1941. He was convinced that the difference in teachingundergraduates of continental (e.g. Austrian, Danish, Dutch,German, Russian or Swiss) universities disadvantagedBritish physics.Typically there existed only few graduate schools inmathematics outside Cambridge. At the time the Edinburghmathematics department had an arrangement with one of theCambridge colleges such that students achieving a ‘FirstClass’ degree in mathematics had the option to go toCambridge. They would in effect repeat part of their syllabusand have the chance to enter for the Tripos. If successful andif they so wished they would eventually do research. Even ifnot intending to go in for research First Class graduateswould be encouraged to go to Cambridge also and sit finalsthere again because of the kudos of the Cambridge degreeand its consequent value in the job market. WalterLedermann, then a research assistant in the Edinburghmathematics department after beginning his studies in

51

Berlin, almost despaired of obtaining a lectureship in aBritish university. An established mathematician heconsidered at some time obtaining a Cambridge qualificationhe considered essential for his promotion. Fortunately heunderestimated his qualifications and would succeed inmaking a career without having to be an undergraduateagain, eventually occupying a chair after the war.

The Department of Applied Mathematics was housed in thebasement of Edinburgh University’s ‘Natural PhilosophyBuilding’, known to most Edinburgh citizens as the former‘Fever Hospital’. The professor’s large and dark room in thebasement, the only room specifically allocated to thedepartment and available for researchers, contained theprofessor’s desk, a swivel chair and a divan, also a largecircular and a rectangular table and some ordinary chairs.Born made me sit next to him on the departmental divanafter I had arrived from the station, and I told him about‘failing’ my mathematics exam set by the Woburn Houseinterviewer. After questioning me he was satisfied with myknowledge of the mathematics ordinarily mastered bycontinental physics students whose subsidiary subject wasmathematics, adding kindly that he doubted he himself couldhave answered the questions put to me in London. Heintroduced me to a young man working at the round tablewhose name was Klaus Fuchs. Yet he would not commithimself to accepting me, another refugee, without consultinghis colleagues, in particular Professor E T Whittaker, theprofessor of mathematics. Fuchs had come to Born highlyrecommended by Professor Mott of Bristol as a fullyqualified theoretician already with some publications to hiscredit and I was, in theoretical physics at least, a beginner.This had been very much the content of the letter Born hadsent to Professor Przibram in Vienna, namely that Bornwould have preferred somebody who would require lessguidance and be more of a real assistant to him.

52

My first interview with Born made me very apprehensive ofmy chances of fitting into his department. He was known tobe an excellent teacher, and the members of his researchschool profited enormously from their contact with him. Onthe other hand, some people grudged him the profit he, theythought, selfishly extracted from this contact himself. In hisseminar in Göttingen he had acquired the reputation that hewould throw out ideas and expect new ideas and constructivecriticism in return or ask his assistants to see whether hisideas were appropriate. I had been told that he tended to’use’ his young people for editing his lectures and to directthem too authoritatively when working on Born’s scientificproblems, but I was to see no evidence of that in Edinburgh.He could be short tempered when one asked a silly questionand blow up in no uncertain terms whether others werepresent or not. ‘Machen Sie das’ (‘do this’) had, so Iunderstood, been his habit to set his postgraduates on theirway in Göttingen. He did expect a lot, but then he had allthese brilliant people like Heitler, London, Landau,Oppenheimer and Heisenberg sitting in the front row of hisseminar room. Indeed some would attend his lectures andhelp him transform them into books. Yet he wouldgenerously acknowledge their contributions and, dependingon their extent, often invite them to be co-authors. He toldme, for example, how E Wigner had helped him showinghow group theory was a faster way than his of calculatingsome problems in crystal structure he was working on. LaterI would find no evidence of selfishness, but only generosityin Born’s actions. However when I had made myappearance, my future in Born’s department did not seemassured at all. Born said he was pondering whether to askMott to accept me in ‘exchange’ for Fuchs. He had sent himFuchs on what seemed to him to be partly a pretext, namelythat ‘Fuchs needed a change’. He would know soon thatthere was an additional reason, namely that Mott wasunhappy about Fuchs’ political involvement in Bristol.Sending me to Mott would not necessarily be against my

53

interests, because I had already worked in Vienna on a solidstate problem, and Mott had a very active group working inthis field. Born also would gain because he might then havea vacancy for a fully qualified theoretician instead of mewhich would suit him better.There was some power in his argument that I might profitmore from a collaboration with Mott. However it would turnout in the end that I would achieve a greater breakthroughthan Fuchs ever did in a problem that was preoccupyingBorn. In retrospect, ‘though, I wonder whether I might nothave eased my subsequent career if I had been working withMott in Bristol. Yet at that moment I only felt despair that Imight be asked to continue my Odyssey which had broughtme from Berlin via Vienna to Scotland, perhaps to Bristoland who knows where else.I was told to come again the following day and spent a nightin a boarding house wondering what my fate was going tobe, but when I returned to the department my fate wasdetermined. Born told me that Professor Whittaker not onlysaw no objection to my joining Born’s department, but thathe thought it was a good idea. Also, Whittaker thought Icould be usefully employed in teaching in tutorials, both inhis Department of Mathematics and in Born’s Department ofApplied Mathematics and that there were funds to pay me asmall fee. Whittaker had a wonderful way of disguisingprinciple by seemingly trivial arguments. He would state forinstance that to lecture in an academic gown had somepurpose if only to keep the chalk off one’s clothes. In mycase he advised Born that my teaching of undergraduateswould enable me to improve my English and get used toBritish ways - the money was hardly mentioned. Within daysI heard both from the International Student Service and fromWoburn House that my grants had been approved, and withthe fees my income for the year was assured with £125 (alecturer’s salary at that time was of the order of £300). Iapplied to the Home Office for an extension of theimmigration officer’s permission to stay for two weeks and

54

shortly afterwards received a letter extending my stay to twoyears, with the proviso that I was ‘expected to leave thecountry’ after completion of my studies.Professor E T Whittaker was an outstanding personality,Fellow of the Royal Society, a former fellow of TrinityCollege, Cambridge, a mathematician of international reputeand a leader of the British academic establishment. In hisown Department of Mathematics Whittaker had collectedaround him a brilliant galaxy of mathematicians, many ofthem accepting chairs later on. His influence went farbeyond the university. It was said there was a competitionbetween him at Edinburgh University and Hardy inCambridge over which of the two had greater influence infilling chairs in mathematics in Great Britain, in the whole ofthe Commonwealth and even beyond. The only time he aswell as Hardy seemed to have failed was in filling a chair inMalta. For a long time there was a notice fixed to the boardin our seminar room asking for applications for a chair there.The difficulty seemed to be that the job description includedthe task of taking an active interest in football and helping tobuild up a football team.

Whittaker regarded as one of his duties to help Born build upa new research school of theoretical physics. It seemed heconsidered me a suitable applicant to do research with Bornand thought I could be a useful, even promising, member ofthis new graduate school. For him there was no feeling ofinsecurity that would prompt him to reject me as one of ‘toomany refugees in the department’ that might lay him opencriticism by the university, as I would experience later inManchester, Leeds and saw in the case of a friend later inSouthampton. He already had one refugee, WalterLedermann, in his own department and later went out of hisway to accept the Hungarian mathematician, A.Erdelyi, evengetting into touch with Rabbi Daiches so that Erdelyi couldbe received in a Jewish observant household. Later, afterWhittaker’s retirement. Erdelyi would follow him in his

55

chair. By pure chance I came across a reference he hadwritten about me when I had applied for a universityposition. In it he stated that I was a Jew, but ‘did not looklike one’ and that I was a rather handsome man. My feelingsfor Whittaker never changed. I admired this Englishman whoto me seemed to be wonderfully representative of the best inBritish society in many of his views and in attitude.Certainly he had some prejudices, but he never let theminterfere with what he regarded as his duty and his ambitionto further mathematics and science in British universities. Hewas also an excellent lecturer. A ‘pure’ mathematician up tothis time he was beginning to become interested in quantumtheory and relativity. Being a mathematician he had thetendency when lecturing on, say, a problem in quantumtheory to feel obliged to arrive at a definite ‘answer’, wherephysicists might have preferred to leave room for somejustifiable doubt. But his lecturing technique was admirable,setting me an example and helping me with my own lecturesin years to come.

I thus became the first junior researcher in a departmentwhere up till then almost every promising Scottish graduatehad usually left and made tracks for Cambridge. The pull toCambridge had been an established tradition before the warand had attracted science graduates from the Empire as wellas from foreign countries, as it had refugee scientists. UnderBorn our research group of two, Klaus Fuchs and myself,rapidly increased in size. In my second year when I had beenawarded a grant from the mathematics scholarship fund,Sheila Power joined us from Dublin, Kathleen Sarginsonfrom London, Barry Spain from Belfast and Peng fromChina. Until I had left Edinburgh there was no Scot in ourresearch group which was soon referred to by staff andstudents of the Natural Philosophy department as the‘Foreign Legion’. We had two seminars, one in Born’sdepartment where academics, mostly from other universities,would give talks on their work and latest results. Among the

56

visitors’ talks I still remember a brilliant lecture given byKramers, on a visit from Holland, in the small lecture roomadjoining Born’s room in his department. When Sommerfeldcame to visit us in Edinburgh shortly before the war Bornseemed proud to tell us that he had never been a pupil ofSommerfeld’s in spite of almost a generation gap betweenSommerfeld and Born. The great teacher gave us a lecture onFermi statistics and Born asked me to look at a problem inthe theory of metals which the lecture had brought to hismind. Planck was another of our famous visitors. He did notgive a lecture, but Born introduced me to him and I had theimpression of a human being of great kindness. He tried toassure me that life was to be compared with a curve whichoverall was rising steadily, but which from time to time hadlocal minima of which Hitler and Nazism were obviousexamples. I am sure he expressed his true feelings and wasnot just trying to console me, a young man who had beenforced to leave his country and lost friends, family andprospects of a career. I think he was quite sincere in insistingthat moral and spiritual values would prevail and that theevents which had driven me abroad were only temporarylows. Yet he did not seem to envisage just how deep andwide these ‘minima’ would turn out to be and that they couldwell have been permanent lows, but for the extreme sacrificeof men and women of other nations who would fightNazism. I do not know what was the purpose of his journeyto Great Britain, I heard later that he had importantdiscussions in London, but his philosophy at the timeseemed to me rather primitive. He was of course an old manand I do not know whether in certain quarters in London heexpressed himself differently. To me his attitude seemedrather typical of the German scientific establishment, namelyto express regret in private about what was happening inGermany, yet not feel an obligation to adopt a more criticalposture in public. There was no open opposition to the racialpolicies that destroyed Germany’s moral fibre and werebound to lead to war. I found no encouragement when he

57

said that in his opinion and in spite of threatening omenshuman progress was inevitable. There was no recognitionthat it was up to Germans like him to take an open moralstand. His kindness to me without obvious self-involvementor feeling of moral obligation did nothing to offset myforeboding for the immediate future.

The second seminar was held in Whittaker’s mathematicalinstitute where we had advanced lecture courses. The settingof this seminar seemed to me to be truly British. At the rearof the small class room there was a roaring fire on whichbefore the seminar commenced the Institute’s janitor wouldplace a large black kettle. This kettle would start boilingalmost exactly 50 minutes later, at the end of the seminar,when the janitor would return and make tea. For tea, after theseminar, other members of the mathematics departmentwould drop in, but also former members when in town aswell as other distinguished faculty members. Theconversation would range from superbly told anecdotes,where Whittaker was the master, to matters of universitypolitics in Edinburgh and elsewhere.I must mention here that in spite of the congenial atmospherein these tea meetings I once detected signs of conflictbetween Born and Whittaker who otherwise appreciatedeach other’s views even if they could not always agree. Butonce a very heated - on Born’s part - discussion took placebetween Born and Whittaker. This was when Whittaker hadshown Born the manuscript of his new book to be publishedby Cambridge University Press on the Theories of the Ether.There was, as readers of this two-volume book know well,no mention of Einstein, except in a footnote. For Born not tomention Einstein in this context was not only sacrilege, itreminded him too strongly of the antisemitic propaganda inGermany which had always denied Einstein’s claim togreatness. For Whittaker, of course, such calumny was farfrom his mind. His argument, which he maintained, wassimply that of a mathematician, not of a physicist, who

58

refused to engage in Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments or torecognise the fundamental importance of Einstein’s conceptof the finite velocity of light from which the Lorentztransformation of length and time would follow. Hepreferred to discuss the mathematical treatment by Poincaréand by Fitzgerald and Lorentz. No argument of Born’swould shake Whittaker’s mathematical attitude. I think hismathematical approach quite simply prevented him fromunderstanding the underlying physics discovered byEinstein, let alone giving him credit for this discovery.

The first advanced course in this seminar was given by HomiBhabha fresh from his collaboration with Heitler inCambridge which had led to the famous paper on thecascade theory of showers. Years later I studied it againwhen I worked, both experimentally and analytically, on thedevelopment of extensive cosmic ray air showers. We hadlectures, too, from Born himself and later from Whittakerand a few by Fuchs on his previous work on metals. Peierlsgave a single lecture in the mathematics seminar showinghow it was possible for people of his - and my - provenanceto master the English language and also to establish goodpersonal relations with British colleagues.Quantum mechanics were just about ten years old andBorn’s lectures were essentially the same he had given just afew years before in Göttingen. They were very much thebook written jointly by him and Jordan and published in1930 which itself contained the results of his papers withJordan published in 1926 and by Born, Jordan andHeisenberg in 1926 and 1927. He also drew attention to thepaper by Jordan and Wigner published in 1928, all publishedin the Zeitschrift für Physik, a scientific journal that wouldfor a long time fade into international oblivion after theexodus of Born’s school. We could not have had a betterintroduction to contemporary theoretical physics. Thelectures took us right back and brought to life the excitingperiod of the beginnings of quantum mechanics. They led us

59

up to recent research in quantum theory. Maurice Pryce, whohad married Born’s younger daughter Gritli, followedBhabha and lectured to us on other recent developments inquantum theory.In private conversations Born would add his personalrecollections - not all of which were published in hismemoirs - of the exciting time when quantum mechanicswas born. He was clearly disappointed that his contributionto quantum mechanics had not been discerned by the awardof the Nobel prize as quickly as had been Heisenberg’s andSchrödinger’s. He was concerned that his fundamentaldiscovery had not been recognised, namely the concept ofprobability in quantum mechanics. Another lack ofappreciation was, he thought, of his insight in Heisenberg’swork. This was his realisation that the formal arrays andtheir combination rules proposed by Heisenberg were in factmatrices and their multiplication rules. He had pointed thisout to Heisenberg who had been unaware of it.Born mentioned the period of intense correspondencebetween him and Heisenberg. Heisenberg, like Bethe lateron, had come to him from Sommerfeld in Munich and hadcertainly benefited from Born’s ideas. Heisenberg then leftGöttingen for Niels Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen, whilesimultaneously Born and his collaborators continued hard atwork in the same field in Göttingen. In Born’s view it wasthe separate but complementary work at the two centres,Born’s Göttingen and Bohr’s Copenhagen, in whichHeisenberg seemed to typify a kind of ‘exchange force’ thathad established quantum mechanics. Strangely ‘though,Born always disclaimed originality for the ‘Bornapproximation’, although to me it seemed that to try a firstorder approximation was a typical approach of Born’s. TheNobel prize was eventually awarded to Born many yearslater in 1954. Young theoreticians might have benefited if hehad received his prize earlier and his fundamentaldiscoveries had been highlighted at the time.

60

When Born was lecturing on quantum mechanics he musthave been struck by the contrast of feedback between that ofhis Edinburgh audience and that at Göttingen. I understoodthat when Born was lecturing in a Göttingen seminar anyslip in his arguments would immediately be seized upon bythe people sitting in the front row, but in Edinburgh anyquestion that would be raised concerned short-cuts only inBorn’s delivery when he strayed from his script. Here,however, he would interrupt himself and add commentaries,remarks and hints. They would be useful if one wanted tosolve problems which he would outline in his lectures andencourage us to try and solve them.

61

Chapter 5 - New Ideas and a

Breakthrough in Solid State Physics

When Born was appointed ‘Tait Professor of NaturalPhilosophy’ in 1936 he was 54, and with the Scottishacademic retirement age at 70 he had a valuable time span infront of him. Whittaker used to joke that new professorswere told when offered a chair in Edinburgh that theretirement age was 70, but that they were not expected towork on Saturdays. Born had worked in many fields ofphysics, in addition to quantum mechanics and solid statetheory. His latest major text book had been on optics,‘Optik’, published in German by Springer. However he hadfew royalties from it. The Soviet publishing agency hadtranslated and published the book, but in accordance withtheir practice paid no royalties. Born nevertheless wrote tothem explaining that he knew they did not recognise theinternational agreement on authors’ rights, but could they seetheir way to let him have a complimentary copy? When warbroke out later the Allied Custodian of Enemy Propertyagreed to photocopies of the book being printed. TheCustodian treated it like any other book published inGermany, even ‘though the author was now a British subject.He collected the proceeds, and again Born lost out.While in Cambridge Born wrote his famous paper withInfeld, published in the proceedings of The Royal Society,London, which is still stimulating authors today. He alsoinspired much other work on quantum field theory. He hadset aside many other problems hoping always he would havetime or opportunity to return to them. Edinburgh was toprovide just such an opportunity. His new department mightnot have had the Göttingen hothouse atmosphere burstingwith new inspiration owing to the presence of brilliant youngpeople from all over the world. Yet Born had not onlycarried many ideas with him, but remained stimulated by

62

new ones through communicating with his friends andformer colleagues who were now scattered all over theglobe.Very soon a number of papers began to emerge from the stillvery small department in Edinburgh. Born’s continuingattempts to deal with the infinities in quantum field theoryresulted in some elegant papers based on his ‘Reciprocity’principle that were published in the Proceedings of the RoyalSociety of Edinburgh. Strongly influenced, as he explainedto us, by his former teacher Hilbert he hoped that symmetrycould be the key to the problem, but I do not think that hewas fully convinced himself. A correspondence with JosephMayer in the US led to some interesting papers (with Fuchs),inspired also by a visit from R H Fowler of Cambridge, onthe theory of liquids. Just as I was leaving the department in1941 there were some new ideas on crystal lattice structureand X-ray scattering arising from a correspondence withKathleen Lonsdale and resulting in important papers.

Fuchs was a great help to Born. As was his usual way Bornwould throw out ideas, and Fuchs would work on them andmake his own contribution. Fuchs greatly benefited fromBorn’s ‘do this’ habit He was an extremely capablemathematician who often would not take very long insolving problems posed by Born’s flashes of intuition. In thissituation he really came into his own and made valuableadditions to the papers with Born both on the theory ofliquids and those of reciprocity.When later, after his conviction for treason in 1950, the pressdescribed Fuchs’ personality and made much play of hismodesty, they painted a completely wrong picture of him.Fuchs saw no grounds for modesty about his own ability. Onthe contrary he was fully convinced of his excellence. It iscommon knowledge that he was forced to leave Germanywhen he found his life endangered because of his communistviews and his political activism among the students. Hisacceptance in Britain had been sponsored by the Quakers’

63

(Friends) Refugee Committee who had full knowledge of hisfather’s, a pastor, pacifist views and of his whole family’shistory. Fuchs arrived in Britain proud to be a product of aGerman university, even if he had to leave it beforecompleting his degree. He did not conceal his satisfactionwhen telling me that after his arrival in Bristol, Mott hadmade him attend undergraduate courses for a short time, buthad told him very soon after not to bother and to proceedstraight to the PhD. The jump from undergraduate status onto the PhD course had increased Fuchs’ self esteem andconfirmed his belief in the superiority of his Germanuniversity over the education offered by many Englishprovincial universities. It also confirmed his belief in hisown superiority over many other English theorists of hisgeneration. True there were not many of these in Britainoutside Cambridge at that time, and Fuchs was aware of this.The description of him by the press as ‘modest’ was not evenappropriate when the papers referred to the state of hisclothing. He just did not care about appearances. He wouldturn up at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in ajacket which not only had a button missing, but with thebutton thread still sticking out so that everybody couldnotice. I do not think it was modesty, but rather a disdain forformal bourgeois conventions of dress, of appearance andother to him trivial matters. In his view such conventionsshould not apply to a man whose excellence in the academicfield had been proved and which interfered with the picturehe had of himself as a scientist. Although this attitude couldbe called arrogance rather than modesty, I think it was moreof a reaction to the low opinion, supported by low salariesand consequentially low standards of living, held aboutprovincial academics (and teachers) in Britain. This was incontrast with the German respect for the Herr Professorwhich he thought was due to him and which he intended toshow up by his attitude. His disregard of conventionsafforded him at least some compensation for the lack ofrecognition he thought he merited.

64

My own calculations of a problem that originated fromSommerfeld’s visit had not got very far when we had a visitand a colloquium given in the spring term of 1938 by P PEwald, then at Belfast University, where he had found a postas lecturer. Ewald gave us a very good talk, but I was evenmore impressed by his personality. Here was an upstandingman whose Nordic physique would have delighted anyGerman racist. Yet Ewald, neither Jewish nor communist,had courageously decided to leave Germany. He hadpreferred loss of status and uncertainty to staying andacquiescing in the ideas holding sway in Germany.

In the discussion after Ewald’s paper about the usefulness ofapplying Fourier transforms in his work Born suggested thatEwald’s ideas might well be applied to calculating thevibrations of a real crystal. An indication of how suchcalculations could be made had been given in Born’s treatise‘Atomtheorie des festen Zustandes’ (Atomic theory of thesolid state) in 1923. This theory of Born’s had been widelyaccepted and was treated again by Born and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (the future ‘mother’ of the nuclear shell model andNobel prize winner) in Volume XXXIV of the Handbuch derPhysik, 1933. In this treatment it was implied that the theorywould lead to a successful determination of the frequenciesof vibration of a real crystal. However, any attempt based onthis suggestion to calculate these crystal lattice vibrations(now known as the ‘phonon spectrum’ of the crystal) hadbeen unsuccessful, in spite of the pioneering work by MBlackman of Imperial College who had made progress bytreating two-dimensional models.

The more detailed account of how I succeeded in calculatingthe lattice vibration frequencies of the phonon spectrum of areal crystal is of some interest.By following a purely empirical approach I hit upon asolution, but only after its success did I fully understand its

65

conceptual implication. I also discovered that a youngresearcher can hit upon an important discovery by notfollowing blindly procedures recommended by greatauthorities, but by daring not to be overawed. My accountalso throws light on the kind of interaction Born often hadwith his researchers.

After being told to ‘do it’ I found that Ewald’s method, asBorn had suspected, was indeed very useful in arriving atformulae that lent themselves to a numerical evaluation ofthe phonon spectrum’s frequencies. The calculations werenot too difficult. There was a certain amount of analyticalmathematics involved. I had to use Ewald’s transformation,apply it to the expression given in the Handbuch article andobtain an expression suitable for computation. Thenumerical computations meant finding the roots of matrices,their eigenvalues as they would be called in quantum theory.In the absence of computers and relying only on themechanical calculators then available the computations werelaborious and took me some months. At first I did not seemuch physics in this work. The interesting work, however,began when after the numerical grind the final results madeno sense. The roots of the matrices I had calculated weresupposed to be the squares of the frequencies of the crystalvibrations. They turned out to be negative, that is thefrequencies themselves would not be real, but complexnumbers! Born was convinced that I had made a mistake andtold me so in no uncertain terms.I was pretty desperate when I went to my lodgings afterseeing Born. Checking over my calculations I was sure I hadmade no mistake and that I had faithfully applied the Ewaldtransformations to the formula given in Born and Goeppert-Mayer’s paper in the Handbuch. I then went back to thisformula, and even further back exploring its derivation in theHandbuch article. After a week or so I came to theconclusion that there was a mistake in the article which uptill then had been accepted generally almost as biblical truth.

66

The expression given in the article of the Fourier series waswrong, because the authors had excluded its zero term, theaverage, from the series. I found that this exclusion of thezero term could not be justified, except in the singular caseof long waves, that is waves long compared with the lengthof the crystal.When I had mustered enough courage to tell Born of myheresy that his article contained a mistake he accused me ofcrass ignorance ‘Das verstehen Sie nicht’ (You don’tunderstand this). Born’s first reaction had been completedisbelief and suspicion of my motives in deducting anindividual term just to obtain a reasonable result, addingremarks such that I considered giving up physics altogether.He maintained that to make a special case for infinitely longwaves, but not for the other vibrations, was arbitrary. Butsoon after I began to really understand the underlyingphysics of my procedure, although it took me another weekor so. Deducting the case of waves long compared with thecrystal’s dimensions simply meant that a crystal does notemit radiation, as of course solid crystals do not whenunprovoked. - I had to see Born again.I remember going to see him in his house. He wasrecovering from a minor stroke that had resulted in a facialparalysis and could speak only with difficulty. Returnedfrom hospital he was in bed in the small room he slept andworked in. From here he would conduct much of his privatecorrespondence in long hand and work on his papers. Hisgraduate students would quite often come and see him there,rather than in the department, especially out of term time.

When I came to see Born, who was still in bed, to explainthat there was a solid foundation in physics for my treatmentI did not have to complete the argument proving my case. Hehad thought about it himself and immediately agreed withme. He was quite excited about the result and moreovershowed himself most generous. He said that the resultingpaper should be published in the Transactions of the Royal

67

Society (London) under my name alone. Later when he‘communicated’ the paper to the Secretary of the Society heshowed me his accompanying letter. It stated among otherremarks that his own treatment in the Handbuch article hadbeen wrong and that my correction had led to the solution ofan important problem in solid state physics.Indeed the knowledge of the phonon spectrum is essential ifone wants to calculate a crystal’s characteristics, for exampleits specific heat, and thus validate the atomic theory bycomparison of the calculated with the measured values of thespecific heat.I followed up this paper by using the spectrum to calculatethe specific heat of the Sodium Chloride crystal. This hadbeen measured quite accurately not very long before at lowtemperatures. The experimental data fitted perfectly to thecurve of the temperature dependence I had calculated.Further comparisons with experimental data were made byBlackman showing good fits with experiments and rebuttingRaman’s arguments who had attacked Born’s generaltreatment of crystal lattices.At the time I did not fully realise all the implications of thisbreakthrough achieved in Edinburgh, although it was quotedimmediately worldwide. 50 years after the appearance of myfirst paper I still met people working in solid state or‘condensed matter’ physics who remembered it and also myname. When I applied for jobs Born would support myapplication and would refer to the breakthrough I hadachieved. Yet I also noted that some people regarded myresults, coming as they did from Born’s department, as theefforts of a research student who had done little more thanrecord his master’s voice. I am very glad to acknowledge,however, that Born gave me full credit for this work.Shortly after it was suggested that both Fuchs and I mightprofit from possessing a British higher degree. Since wealready had PhD degrees, Fuchs from Bristol and I fromVienna, Born made us apply for a DSc. Fuchs pinnedtogether the reprints of his publications, whereas my thesis

68

consisted essentially of my work on the phonon spectrum.However, the Higher Degrees Committee decided thatwhatever the standard of my thesis, a DSc was awarded onlyfor a number of publications illustrating the record ofscientific achievements over a number of years and advisedthat for the thesis submitted by me they could award a PhDonly, however important were its findings. I was persuadedthat accepting a British degree might help me in my futurecareer, but was disappointed because I considered anotherPhD not a more valuable qualification than my Viennese DrPhil. Moreover, I thought what I had achieved was reallypost-doctoral work. When years later I made enquiries inEdinburgh stating the number and titles of papers I couldsubmit, the University was willing to consider me for theDSc degree. However I then decided not to proceed, becauseI could see no practical advantage in hanging on more lettersafter my FInstP, the fellowship of the Institute of Physics.

69

Chapter 6 - Imminent War? How

Klaus Fuchs Saw It

As in Vienna politics kept playing a direct part in my physicscareer. Germany had invaded Austria in March 1938 muchto the delight, it seemed, of the majority of Austrians. Itmade me officially a refugee within the definition of myimmigration officer, namely that I could not return toVienna. War had become nearer.Born had accepted Klaus Fuchs in his department oncondition that he would not engage in any political activitiesin Edinburgh such as he had done in Bristol. To myknowledge he was not politically active, but he had notchanged his views. His lodgings were about 100 metresdown the same road where I had mine and I might pop downoccasionally to see him, or he would come up to my place.Sometimes we went to the cinema together especially whenthere was a film starring Bette Davis whose acting headmired. We had many discussions about Britain’s attitudeto Germany as the threat of war increased. His views weretypically that of a communist, while I was holding broadlyanti-fascist views and hoping for an initiative of the Westernpowers to ‘stop’ Hitler by threatening military opposition toHitler’s plans. Fuchs seemed far less concerned about theimminent danger of war and its effect on our own positionthan I was. I suppose that his Marxist attitude made himregard world events less from a personal point of view suchas mine. I had to defer to the British government’s non-interference policy in the Spanish Civil War where thesituation of the Republicans became more and moredesperate during 1938. Yet I was still hopeful that Britainand France would eventually make a stand and force Hitlerinto desisting from war. Fuchs did not agree. He wentfarther. He was convinced that the Chamberlain-Halifaxpolicies, officially advertised as ‘staving off war’, but later to

70

be dubbed ‘appeasement’, had only one aim, namely to turnGerman aggression towards Russia. Unlike myself and agood many other non-communists Fuchs was not in the leastsurprised - or upset and disgusted as I was - by the Sovietdecision to enter into a non-aggression pact with Germany in1939. He argued that the Russians had not been given anychoice in view of Chamberlain’s policies. While I accusedRussia of making peace with fascism he held that Russia’spolicies were simply pragmatic, because the Soviets hadsuccessfully obstructed Chamberlain’s policies aiming toengineer a conflict between Germany and Russia. Fuchs didnot think that Russia had suddenly become a friend ofGermany’s, although some newspapers were propagatingthis idea and many people believed it. He simply thoughtthat Russia had brilliantly succeeded in gaining time forbuilding up her defences before the threatening conflictwhich to him now seemed inevitable. He thought that myview that Britain and France would oppose Hitler so soonafter the experience of the Spanish Civil War was starry-eyed. On the other hand I thought he had an exaggeratedopinion of the strength of the opposition to Hitler insideGermany. Even when Britain eventually did enter the war,beginning with the ‘phoney war’ period, Fuchs would not beconvinced of the British government’s resolve to defeatGermany, but thought that the Chamberlain governmentwould not prosecute the war effectively. The volte-face inthe British attitude to us refugees, who were suddenlysuspect as ‘Germans’ and soon to be interned, was for himonly one other indication that the war was being waged not,as he had hoped, as a war against fascism, but along old-fashioned nationalistic lines. I am convinced that hispersonal experience of the British policy of interningrefugees which was to follow largely increased his mistrustof Britain and therefore his resolve, when he had the chance,to help the Soviets to reach equality with the West in nuclearweapons. He would not admit that the British people wouldunite against Hitler, except on the basis of a fight for

71

national survival, rather than in defence of democracy. Hepointed to the attitude of the British press where very fewpapers opposed Chamberlain’s policies. The News Chronicleand Reynolds News newspapers, both now extinct, did notsupport them, but neither did they suggest any plausiblealternatives. I regularly read Scrutator’s articles in theSunday Times and the editorials in the Daily Telegraph andfelt that the British establishment and its press were trying tokeep the British people in the dark about Hitler’s intentions.It seemed so easy to do in spite of Churchill’s speeches upand down the country.

Political opinion in Britain was divided, but seemed to me tobe largely leaning towards supporting Chamberlain’spolicies. The Right had much support when making a casefor ‘appeasement’, although this word was not used at thetime. The policies were endorsed, too, by the pacifist Leftthroughout the country when Chamberlain gave theimpression that the substance of his politics was to avoidwar. To me it was clear that his policies, even if not sodesigned, would effectively bring about war. I was appalledto see how easy it seemed for German propaganda tohoodwink the British public about the, to me, obviousGerman goals, namely to dominate Europe by any means,peacefully if possible, but militarily if not. In spite of this Istill hoped that Britain would make a stand eventually andconfront Hitler and that this would avoid war. Many of therefugees, including myself, thought that even in 1938 aconcerted stand by Britain and France would avoid war. We,the refugees, could only discuss these views amongourselves. The refugee aids agencies had impressed on allrefugees to stay out of politics and not air our views inpublic. A graphic description in public of what we knew ofthe plight of the Jews and other minorities in Germany,Austria or Czechoslovakia would not please officialdom. Itheld that such news would disturb the climate created byChamberlain’s government by making the British public

72

aware of what we knew to be Germany’s true intentions.These news could influence public opinion to demanddecisive action against the fascist government at a time whenofficial British policy tried to avoid just that. We were toldto keep what we thought to ourselves, because our alarmingviews could backfire on us, the refugees, who could beaccused of being warmongers.My hope that Chamberlain would change his policies andfrighten Hitler off seems forlorn in the light of theinformation available today, but then like many otherrefugees, I did not want to read the signs in the way Fuchsread them. In retrospect I realise that I was wrong. True, weknow today that there were feelers emanating from insideGermany asking Britain to oppose Hitler decisively, but wealso know that the British answer to these approaches wasthat a stand against Hitler would have to be made first inGermany itself, before the West would even considersupporting the anti-Nazi elements in Germany. Moreover Ihad no idea of the degree of military preparedness ofGermany.

My hope was sustained by Churchill’s speeches, by theattitude of the News Chronicle with its reports by JamesCameron, by the by-election in which Edith Summerskillwas elected on an anti-appeasement platform for Labour andby other anti-Hitler pronouncements in public life. Iconsidered Chamberlain’s trip to Munich a disaster. Yet onemust not forget that although people today ridicule the imageof the British prime minister’s waving a piece of paper andexpressing the hope that peace had been achieved, there wasan immense relief felt by the vast majority of the Britishpeople after this announcement.

Fuchs’ views of a British anti-Russian attitude wereconfirmed when ‘Poor Finland’, in the newspapers’language, was attacked by Russia at the beginning of thewar. There was a tremendous swell of public opinion, much

73

encouraged by the government, to give whatever supportthey could to that ‘little country’. While not approvingRussia’s action people should at least have realised that inspite of their new ’friendship’ with Germany the Russianshad acted to secure a back door against a country that hadobvious German sympathies.

I must confess that my feelings were mixed when the smallamateur orchestra where I was part of the first violins wasasked to give a charity concert in favour of the Finns. Myparticipation in this concert was the only political, ifnegligible, action I ever took part in until well after the war,but at least my musical education benefited from it. Dr HansGál, the distinguished musicologist, composer and formerhead of the music conservatoire at Mainz, was ourconductor. At one rehearsal for the concert Sabine Kalter,formerly of the Berlin Kroll opera, the second state opera inBerlin, decided to hold a high note for a very long time. Theorchestra unanimously felt, however, that the diva wastaking an undue liberty and played the next note to the furyof the singer and the embarrassment of our conductor. Heimmediately told us in no uncertain terms that when a soloistdecided to dwell on a fermata he did not care what weplayed as long as it was not the next note.Our charity concert was a success financially, but notsurprisingly failed to stop the Russians who by then hadthrown in some of their crack troops. Yet amateur studentsof politics, like myself, breathed more easily. It now seemedthat Russia, which in this war at first had seemed unable todefeat even a small country such as Finland, had after all ameasure of military competence needed to resist a Germanonslaught which I was sure it would face before long.

I was fortunate to meet in Edinburgh a most pleasant anddistinguished selection of refugees. Dr Gál, althoughsomewhat older than I, had become a good friend. He waslater to become a tenured member of Donald Tovey’s

74

Department of Music and, after the war well past retiringage, would be celebrated and honoured in Germany. I alsomet a former Austrian lawyer, Mr Löwensohn, an older manwell into his forties, or so he appeared to me. I very muchadmired him as a man not afraid to start again at thebeginning and study Scottish law. He would be a great helpto other refugees when I was interned with him sometimelater and he would succeed in becoming a Scottish lawyer inspite of his accent, a mixture of Glaswegian and Yiddish. Ihave great respect for those middle aged men who had thestrength to begin again and become students, like Dr Auber,a former bank clerk in Vienna who would qualify as abiologist and whom I would meet again years later in Leedswhere he had become a member of staff of the WoolResearch Institute.

The majority of my co-refugees in Edinburgh were medics.We often met at the house of the sisters of Eric Turk, of DrMartha, who had re-qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh buthad decided not to practice, and Miss Bertel Turk. They hadsettled in Edinburgh and kept open house for us every Fridaynight. I was glad to meet them and their family there as wellas established citizens of Edinburgh and some distinguishedvisitors to the city.The presence of so many refugee medics in Edinburghthrows some light on the reception policy of medics inBritain. When Martha Turk arrived in Britain early in 1933she was allowed to qualify after an additional two years, Ibelieve, of study and passing the customary finals at theRoyal College of Surgeons at Edinburgh.However when it appeared that there could be a flood ofrefugee doctors and dentists spilling over to England themedical profession closed ranks and allowed only a quota ofthese refugees to be accepted per year to go through theBritish qualification process. This action must be seenagainst the background of the established way of training ofdoctors in Britain at the time. The number of yearly entries

75

into the medical schools was limited, and strict criteria ofselection and of promotion to consultant status applied. Thisdid not necessarily result in antisemitic practices, although itdid cut down the number of Jewish doctors in medicine tomuch below the proportion experienced in Berlin and moreso in Vienna. There were also some variations betweenBritish medical schools resulting sometimes indiscrimination even against British born Jews. I wasastounded that when I came to Leeds in 1950 I found not oneJewish established member of the medical school. When thequota system for foreigners was introduced by the RoyalCollege in Edinburgh and elsewhere doctors not too fardown the waiting list could come to Britain. I had adesperate letter from my former doctor, almost twenty yearsmy senior telling me that he was on the waiting list andwondered whether I could somehow arrange, since I was inEdinburgh, that his file could by some means or other benearer the top of the pile of waiting list candidates, so that heand his family could come to Britain from Vienna whereconditions were becoming intolerable. I did go to theCollege, but was told I was not the only one who had tried toaccelerate matters for a friend. There were many like him indire straits, and no exception could be made. Just before thewar, however, the Home Office prevailed on the medicalprofession to relax their stand. A number, I think 200, ofJewish doctors and dentists who were recommended in viewof their distinguished record were then allowed to enterBritain and re-qualify. No doubt the government saw that thenumber of British doctors was low compared with othercountries in the West and also had in mind that a future warwould find such number inadequate. This incidentally didnot prevent, if only for a short time, the internment as‘enemy aliens’ of refugees who had entered Britain earlierand qualified as doctors in the normal way, but were not yetnaturalized at the outbreak of war.At the Turks’ House I met doctors who had just qualified orwere about to like Mr Sugar the ENT specialist, Dr E J Levin

76

the neurologist, Kate Hermann the physician working asclinical assistant to Mr Dott, Edinburgh’s famous brainsurgeon and Dr Billigheimer, father of three promising sonswho would eventually decide to take their mother’s, MrsBodmer’s, name. I also met Dr F Gross the famous Viennabiologist who would soon be struck down tragically byillness just after he had accepted a prestigious position asdirector of a new Marine Laboratory of the University ofWales at Bangor, Dr Schneider the dental surgeon, and ofcourse Dr Gál who at the Turks’ home would often sit downat the piano and treat us to a recital. There were also theintimate friends and relations of the Turk family, who livedin the house, Olga, Aviva, Peter and Angelina who had beenadopted by the Turk sisters in all but name. Martha was soonto die of cancer, and the house tradition of becoming awonderful spiritual centre for us had to be continued byBertel alone assisted by Olga.In the University I made friends also. I was amazed by thecontrast between Vienna and Edinburgh student life. When Ifirst saw the university’s calendar and the paragraphmentioning ‘colours’ of the university and of its sport clubs Iwas apprehensive, until I found out that such ‘colours’ werein no way similar to the colours sported by the Berlin orVienna student fraternities. I was relieved to find that suchfraternities, right-wing and graded by class or duellingpropensities, did not exist in Edinburgh. Instead I could joinany student club I wanted to. There was no bar to my entrybased on race or provenance. I finally joined the Boat Clubwhere I would make a friend for life and who later becamean eminent lawyer. I also joined the International Club. Thisclub met at the house of a member of staff of the university,a well-known Quaker. Here mostly international issues weredebated in a lively but never violent manner, an eye-openingexperience for me. I remember vividly the debates in whichsome German as well as Russian students took part against abackground of British students’ opinions who were mostlyantifascist. There was no fighting in the corridors, but

77

intense debating, often followed by votes. Some friends andI would continue discussions privately well into the night.

When war threatened before Chamberlain’s journey toMunich in 1938 I wrote a letter to my mother in Berlin,telling her how upset I was that I might not see her again fora long time, perhaps never. She was then 62. My brother, bythen in the US, had heard through his refugees’ agency thatthe Liberal Jewish Synagogue had set up a committee forrefugees and was petitioning the Home Office to save anumber of elderly Jewish persons in Germany. I had heardnothing about this from Woburn House, the committee whohad all my details. He cabled urgently to Lady Lily Montaguand we were overjoyed to hear not long afterwards that theHome Office had approved a list of persons sponsored by theSynagogue which contained my mother’s name, the widowof Rabbi Dr Benzion Kellermann, but ‘regretfully’ not hersister, my aunt Johanna, formerly of Vienna. My aunt was todie in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, I believe in1941. My mother obtained her exit visa and could join me inEdinburgh where my landlady found another room for her inthe spring of 1939. In September of that year the Germansinvaded Poland and Britain declared war on Germany.

78

Chapter 7 - The Internment Of

Genuine Refugees

War had broken out when my paper was sent to the RoyalSociety and I hastened to complete the second paper inwhich I used ‘my’ phonon spectrum to calculate the specificheat of the sodium chloride crystal showing the fit ofexperimental data to my calculations.Born suggested that I should now take an interest in hisreciprocity theory, and I commenced work on it. It wasrather fun playing about with 4-dimensional Legendrepolynomials, but I was never enthusiastic about the theoryand also felt that I would be better employed in helping thewar effort rather than working on field theory, which seemedto me irrelevant at that momentous time in European history.My name had been put on the Scientific and TechnicalRegister with all my qualifications, including the twodoctors’ degrees, and I was waiting to be summoned to workfor the government. However, I was informed that myofficially still German nationality prevented me from beingaccepted for such work. Before this situation could beresolved the government decided to intern all ‘enemy’ aliens,even those refugees like myself who had been investigatedby the Home Office and declared reliable by tribunalsspecially set up to differentiate between genuine refugeesand unreliable enemy aliens. These tribunals had been set uplong before the outbreak of war. They classified us as‘aliens’ class ‘A, ‘B’ or ‘C’. The A’s were the enemy alienswho would be interned if war broke out as well as many ofthe B’s. Genuine refugees were C’s, they would not beregarded as enemies and were not supposed to be interned ina war situation.Unfortunately the government had not given much publicityto its very reasonable and in fact most effective policies of

79

screening aliens. When German troops overran the LowCountries the public began to worry about the aliens in theirmidst and the government decided to change its policy aboutthe internment of refugees. A hysterical publicity campaignhad begun in the press. The Daily Mail especially found itfitting to run scare stories about the reliability of refugeesand splashed headlines such as ‘INTERN THE LOT’ over itsfront page. The press campaign negated all the careful workdone by an understanding and tolerant Home Office and itstribunals before the war to clear genuine refugees ofsuspicion. We know now that this campaign was inspired bysome of the highest ranking members of the government ofthe day. In my opinion it eventually would have graveconsequences, because it would alienate many politicalrefugees, Klaus Fuchs among them.

The internment began on a very low key. A policeman calledon my lodgings one fine day in May 1940. We exchangedpolite greetings as I had already met him once or twice at theAliens department of the local police and had seen him atsome students’ social functions where foreign students tookpart. He was almost apologetic when he explained I wouldbe interned in spite of my status of cleared, ‘C’, alien. Hethought personally that the newspapers’ description of theGerman occupation of Belgium and Holland and the Germanadvance in France had led to the order to intern me andothers and advised me to pack personal belongings necessaryfor about two weeks after which he, like many of my friends,thought things would be sorted out for people like me. I wasdelivered to a local military transit camp where I met Fuchsand other refugees from the Edinburgh region. We weresoon transferred to another larger transit camp at Huytonnear Liverpool. This was a new housing estate, not yetoccupied by its intended residents. Houses, central amenitiesand local streets had been converted quickly into a camp bysurrounding the estate with a barbed wire fence patrolled byarmed soldiers. We were quartered in the houses and slept

80

three to four to a room on straw mattresses on the floor. Ishared one room with Fuchs and two older refugees who hadbeen fighting on the republican side in Spain and whoseadmission to this country had been sponsored by the CzechRefugees Trust Fund. Fuchs had introduced me to them, butI did not know how he had come to know them. I have oftenwondered whether there is or was a secret recognition signby which communists could tell their comrades about theirallegiance.

I had never expected that internment would school me inpolitics and was surprised by how much political actionwould take place in the camps when I was interned, thatpolitics would matter even when one was locked up behindbars, or rather behind barbed wire. This became soonobvious in Huyton. British internment camps would not turnus into a cowed amorphous crowd of Untermenschen, asGerman concentration camps did to their inmates. Therewere mess huts where at meal times we would be addressedby co-internees, discuss issues important to us and asked tovote on resolutions. We would also walk in the streets of thewired estate and call on houses to sound opinion, as wewould today in elections. At one of the meal times it wasannounced by somebody who had heard it from a soldier thatChamberlain had resigned and that Churchill was forming acoalition government. I still remember the cheer that went upand the total reverse in our morale. Never mind our personalpredicament, Britain was now united in fighting Hitler!

In Huyton internal politics took a nasty turn when the needfor representation arose almost as soon as we had arrived.We were called out of our houses and told by theCommanding Officer that we needed to be represented sothat he could establish a chain of command reaching us andconversely we could approach him with our problems. Hehad therefore decided to appoint a spokesman for us and hadchosen a man who in his opinion was well qualified for this

81

office, because he was a German who had already beeninterned in the First World War and had experience of beinga camp spokesman. In other words, he was a Nazi who hadlived in Britain for more than 25 years and had either notapplied for or even been refused naturalisation. Since almostall of us were refugees and Nazi opponents we wereoutraged by the camp commander’s appointment of a manwho was a real enemy alien, could not possibly represent usand was possibly regarding us as Untermenschen. I wasstruck by the lack of political education of the military inpre-war Britain. Our experience was a minor example of it.Two famous examples of this deficiency were when early inthe war the French Navy was allowed to pass unhinderedthrough the Straits of Gibraltar, and another was thehandshake between a British and a German general after thedefeat of the German army in North Africa. Fortunately thisdeficiency has now been corrected as the decisions of theBritish military commander in Kosovo recentlydemonstrated.Our CO’s attitude posed the problem how to organiseourselves and ask for our representatives to be received bythe camp commander. We finally managed to elect acounter-representative and sought a meeting with the campcommander, but I did not stay to see the outcome, becausewith many others I was very suddenly transported to the Isleof Man.Here it was easier for us to get organised, because we werequartered in boarding houses in Douglas and other holidayresorts, not in the ‘luxurious accommodation’ of sea frontboarding houses as the right wing tabloids would have it, butfour to a room designed for one or two. There could beperhaps 70 of us in a house where we elected a ‘housefather’, and the house fathers then formed the campexecutive.

When internment came to us ‘HM loyal enemy aliens’ - aswe liked to call ourselves - our reactions varied. Quite a few

82

refugees were terrified when they were interned. Theythought it quite possible that there could be British attemptsto come to an understanding with Germany when ourunsavoury collection of Jews and communists, as we mightbe labelled, would be in the way of such a settlement. Someof us who had contacts in France and knew what washappening there feared that the British were putting therefugees into camps perhaps to adopt the French practice ofdelivering them to the Gestapo. Fuchs and his fellowpolitical refugees took internment as confirmation that theBritish had no intention of fighting a war against fascism,but were fighting an old-fashioned imperialistic war whichthey would end as soon as a quick end was achievable by adishonourable compromise. Before the war Fuchs hadalmost convinced me that the British might have mixedmotives in declaring war on Germany. Had he been right? Istill could not agree. I saw Churchill’s appointment as anindication of the will of the British people to fight Germanyas a matter of national survival and of fighting fordemocracy, whatever the motivation of those people who atfirst had supported Chamberlain’s policies before the war.The German advances on the continent and the bombingraids on Britain had of course contributed to this nationalconsensus. On the other hand, like many of those who hadcome to Britain seeking asylum and for whose welfare thiscountry had accepted responsibility I felt hurt and furious. Ifelt that we were not trusted and were treated shamefully,especially when later many of us were transported overseas,facing unwarranted dangers that could and would in manycases did lead to their death.Fuchs never forgave official Britain for the treatment metedout to him. I am sure that his experience of internment aswell as what he considered the chauvinistic reasonsunderlying it had played a part in his decision to approachthe Soviets. With his own Marxist analysis he maintainedthat the compliance by the British government with theattacks on us by the right-wing press, which led to the

83

internment of genuine antifascists, showed up its true goal.This was not to establish freedom and democracy, but tocontinue old imperialist power politics and to attemptshameful compromises with the Nazis. He must havethought that a government carrying out such politics had lessclaim on his loyalty than a country which was genuinelyinterested in the destruction of fascism. Thus later he wouldfeel less bound by his oath of allegiance to the British Crownthan by his allegiance to the antifascist cause of the Soviets.He would remember that he was first humiliated andinterned as refugee rabble but later, when his brilliant brainwas needed, was asked to forget all about the humiliation ofhis internment. As he saw it he was forced to apply forBritish nationality which was granted to him only so that hecould take the oath of allegiance and sign the OfficialSecrets Act. He felt no gratitude for being transformed fromrefugee into a British subject such as I would have felt. Hethought he was entitled to make his decision to act inaccordance with his views, as Britain had done quiteunscrupulously because it needed his considerable talents towork on the design of the bomb.

Without accepting this Marxist analysis I thought that thegovernment’s decision to intern me and persons like myselfwas wrong. Even today I am upset when after all this time Imeet or hear of some former refugees, now academics orwell established professionals, or holding other high publicoffice, who laugh off their internment. They regard it asquite a ridiculous episode on the part of British officialdomwhich in retrospect should not be taken seriously. Theyforget how frightened they were at the time. They feared theworst for their future and for the future of this country thatwas threatened by enemies, external and internal. At thattime they, too, felt that a terrible injustice had been done tous and that there was nothing to joke about in the internmentsituation. On the other hand, in contrast to these latter dayjokers I am proud to have belonged to those who in spite of

84

the hurt inflicted I kept my faith in what I firmly believedwas the true nature of the British people. Quite oftenpopulism conflicts with humanitarian principles. I may havean idealistic view of the British people, but I have alwaysbelieved that in Britain such conflicts will in the end beresolved and humanity will triumph. It is in this belief thatwe internees wrote and sent memoranda and telegrams toMPs, to trade unions, to refugee care organisations and toother leaders of British opinion. We informed them of ourplight and of what we felt was the injustice done not just tous, but to the cause of British democracy by treating provenenemies of Hitler as enemies of the Allied cause. Yet afterour release from internment I never saw what had happenedto us as a laughably silly glitch to be forgotten, nor did Iforget the treatment meted out to us in transporting usoverseas. On the other hand I did recognise the magnanimityof a nation that, when facing its greatest danger, found timeto listen to the voices from the internment camps andeventually felt strong enough to reverse the measures a panicstricken government had taken.Internment, ‘though, did not make me pro-Russian. I knewfull well what had happened to those refugees who onHitler’s seizing of power had emigrated to Russia. Within ashort time most of them had left Russia again, deeplydisappointed by the cool reception and suspicion they hadencountered there.

In taking up our fight for release some of us internees whoheld British degrees had the idea of writing to their Membersof Parliament and acquaint them with our position. At thattime British universities were represented separately inParliament by MPs elected by the graduate members of theiruniversities. We rather doubted whether these MPs wouldact for us who were not British, but we tried anyway andpractically flooded them with our submissions and otherurgent messages. I do not think the legal aspect of ourrepresentation was ever resolved, but some MPs did take up

85

our case and Eleanor Rathbone, independent MP for EnglishUniversities, became our outstanding and untiring advocateboth in Parliament and outside it. She was aided, too, by therepresentations made by academic, religious and welfare aidagencies all acting on our behalf. Later Miss Rathbone toldsome of us whom she met after their release that she hadbeen most impressed by our case and the way it had beenpresented in the documentation she had received from theinternment camps. She just wondered whether we could nothave been a bit more sparing with the flood of ourmemoranda and telegrams sent her. Perhaps we did causeher unnecessary work, but we had no idea at the timewhether our messages were getting past the campcensorship, and the censor certainly did not let us receivereplies from her or from our other advocates for a long time.Only much later did we hear of her reaction and of the otherefforts on our behalf through indirect channels. Sadly thesuccess of those who pleaded for us was spurred by theshock felt by the whole Free World on hearing of the sinkingof the Andorra Star, one of the transports taking internedrefugees to Australia, and of circumstances coming to lightof the miserable treatment of refugees on some of thetransports to Australia.

Morale in the camp was good during the few weeks I spentthere. We were really a quite extraordinary mixture of men.One could only shake one’s head in astonishment at theamount of talent of the people interned, prevented by theirinternment from playing a part in Britain’s war effort. I amglad to acknowledge that in due course this would berealised by more farsighted people than those who wereresponsible for our initial internment. For instance in thehouse next to my boarding house were Dr Gál as well as thedental surgeon Dr Schneider and Dr Gross. In another housewas Hermann Bondi who after his release would accept achair at Kings College, London, and embark on a brilliantpublic career. Ironically this would include the position of

86

Chief Scientist to the Defence Department, hardly a post heconsidered a realistic possibility when he was interned as‘enemy alien’. In this atmosphere it was possible to keepbusy with various activities, some making an impact farbeyond the internment period. One of those was the birth ofthe famous Amadeus Quartet whose members met on theIsle of Man. There was enough talent also to organise asmall camp ‘university’ where amongst others Fuchs and Igave lectures.

While on the Isle of Man we could enjoy the sea air, butrations were poor and we were hungry. I remember gettinghold of a raw onion and sharing it with two of my roommates. Although not particularly nourishing it helped to stillmy hunger for quite a time. My room mates were thepolitical refugees sponsored by the Czech Trust Fund I hadbeen with since Huyton. They were working class andperhaps ten or fifteen years older than I and, beingcommunist, they were not surprised to find themselves putbehind barbed wire by the army of a capitalist government.This was the first time in my life I had been in close contactwith workers. Neither in school nor later had I ever beenacquainted with members of a politically aware workingclass. They knew I was not ‘one of them’, but fate had put ustogether, and we became good comrades. Besides they wereused to camp life and in our first camp in Huyton had taughtme a few things, for instance not to walk past the militarykitchens without looking whether there was food one couldcome by, or to pick up odd bits of wood or other combustiblematerial with which we could light a fire in our grate, as theevenings were becoming chilly.

My mother, although not interned because of her age, wasnevertheless inconvenienced. I was not allowed to send her acheque she needed to supplement the only just adequatesupport she received from the Refugee Committee. Thecamp commander ruled that we ’enemy aliens’ were not

87

allowed to carry out financial transactions. We succeeded inhaving a solicitor sent into the camp to help us make sucharrangements as were allowed to ease the situation of our notinterned relatives. This proved to be disappointing. Thesolicitor received some of us in an office allocated to him bythe Camp Commanding Officer, and soon a long queue hadformed of those of us who wanted to see him urgently. Thequeue moved forward with reasonable speed, but came to acomplete halt once Dr Löwensohn had entered the office.We waited and waited, but finally after about one hour, thedoor opened and, not Dr Löwensohn, but the solicitoremerged and left never to return. We would never know inwhat legal - or other - arguments those two men had beeninvolved.

Internment, particularly in my next camp, taught me somevaluable lessons in democracy and in leadership. Inaccordance with military practice of posting personnel, or inthis case internees, from camp to camp I was transported toCanada. I was a member of a group consisting mostly, butnot exclusively, of young men between the ages of 20 to 30.The War Department in its wisdom had decided that at thisage we refugees posed the greatest danger. It persuaded theCanadian government that it would contribute to the UnitedKingdom’s security and give Britain material help byinterning us in one of its Canadian camps far from thetheatre of war. We embarked on the troop transport shipEttrick and had an appalling voyage.The voyage was dangerous for us and irresponsiblyorganised, not so much because we were sent overseas,which equally applied to British soldiers, but because wewere held below deck in a barbed wire enclosure. We couldnot have abandoned ship in time in the case of a U-Boatattack and at least have a chance of taking to the life boats oreven to jump into the sea. We knew of the fate of our fellowrefugees in the Andorra Star who went down with the ship.There were also minor inconveniences like restricted access

88

to toilets which led to very unpleasant consequences. To addto our discomfort we discovered that a different holdcontained a number of German parachutists who had beencaptured in the Netherlands. They lost no time, when ourorderlies encountered them outside the galley where theycollected our food, in assuring our people that the war waspractically won by Germany and that they would soon bereturning to the fatherland and ironically speculated aboutthe fate that would be awaiting us. Incidentally, the Ettrickwas sunk by enemy action not many months later, whenfulfilling its designed role as a troop transport.On board ship I witnessed no maltreatment such as has beenreported from the Australian transports. The only minorincident I witnessed during this period was when wetransferred to the ship that was to take us to the Isle of Man.I saw an elderly Jewish refugee carrying two heavysuitcases, probably all the possessions he had in the world,being struck on his back with a heavy walking stick by anarmy captain. The man was struggling up a companion waytoo slowly in the judgement of the officer.

89

Chapter 8 - Shipped To Canada, But

Democracy Lives

Our first experience in Canada was that we were robbedafter our arrival of some of the little property we had broughtwith us. Arriving in early autumn of 1940 we were allowedon deck to see the magnificent spectacle of the St Lawrenceriver bathed in sunlight and the wonderful scenery of the oldfortifications and more recent buildings near Quebec. Thestory of how on disembarkment we were so thoroughly‘searched’ by some of the stay-at-home Canadian soldierswho had not volunteered for overseas service, has beendocumented elsewhere. Some of us retrieved our possessionslike typewriters and watches after the Royal Mounties’ CIDhad made efforts to recover them from fences in Quebec.Still, we felt greatly relieved that we had survived theAtlantic crossing and would soon find that the Canadiansgave us military rations in contrast with the daily 2500calories or less we had been given in England.

I remember internment in Canada as my first schooling inactive politics, and of how democracy worked at groundlevel, how leaders emerged and achieved to keep in touchwith the people they represented. I learned, mainly from thepolitical internees, how to keep in touch with my fellowinternees’ opinions. I learned that in spite of being motivatedby the same aims there could be great differences ofsubstance within a committee entrusted with the fate of thepeople they represented and how on occasions decisions hadto be made that were unpopular, but preserved their safety. Ialso learnt how to put forward and argue views in theexecutive committee and how often it would be more usefulto come to an agreed solution, rather than push one’s own

90

opinion to the limit. This was quite a change from taking anacademic interest in politics. This was democracy in action.Here we were, surrounded by barbed wire, guarded by armedsoldiers and seemingly impotent. Yet we could organise andformulate policy. We could and did send memoranda to thecamp authorities and through them to the outside world. Thiswas possible, of course, because in all fairness the campcommander forwarded our documents, and we had friendsoutside.

We lost no time in getting organised in our first camp inCanada. We were quartered in large huts, and each hutelected a representative enabling us to form a campcommittee within hours of our arrival. At our first meetingwe decided to draw up a submission to the camp commanderto inform him of what kind of people we were. Thedocument was drafted largely by Heinz Arndt, a graduate ofthe London School of Economics, in due course to become aprofessor of economics.I thought it was a good document and after approval by ourcommittee it was addressed and delivered to the campcommander with the request to forward it after perusal to theCanadian internment authorities in Ottawa. In it weintroduced ourselves stating that we were not the enemyaliens or spies or fifth columnists the Canadian authoritiesmight have been led to expect by the British War Office, adescription we learnt that had been taken up by the Canadianpress, but refugees loyal to the Allied cause, and that wewere anxious to make our contribution to the Allied wareffort. We later heard that our document not only surprisedour camp commandant, but had raised eyebrows in Ottawa.There it also caused much annoyance with Britain forexporting to Canada this strange collection of people with alltheir problems, including some who made no secret of theirdesire to take this opportunity to circumvent Canada’simmigration laws and stay in Canada for good.

91

True, we were not a homogeneous group. There were olderpeople, a few of them not classified class ‘C’ by the Britishtribunals as we genuine refugees were. There was also ateenager who because of a serious eye infection was noteven admissible under the Canadian immigration laws, andhe was promptly removed from the camp, probably to bequarantined. In fact with us were people who, as theCanadians suspected, had simply been added to our numbersbecause British camp commanders saw our transport as anideal opportunity to get rid of some undesirable elements intheir camps. In our 20-30 age group was a large number ofundergraduates and graduates, many from Oxford,Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Therewere Fuchs and I ‘representing’ the Scottish universities aswell as a sprinkling from other places of learning, also youngbusiness men. A large number of refugees had come fromthe ‘Kitchener Camp’. These were young people who hadbeen in, or had been threatened with, German concentrationcamps and had been accepted by Britain just before the waron condition that they would go to a camp, the ‘KitchenerCamp’, pending their acceptance by other countriesoverseas. Some of them had not been out of camps for anumber of years. A large number of them would later jointhe Pioneer Corps of the British army. We also had a numberof atypical refugees. One of them was the Kaiser’s grandson,Count von Lingen. There were political refugees, some olderthan 30, from Czechoslovakia displaced by the Germaninvasion of their country and sponsored by the CzechRefugee Trust Fund, mostly former members of theInternational Brigade who had fought in Spain. Theyincluded the former German general Kahle, a charming man,who played an active part in our committee adopting there aleft wing, but nevertheless a pragmatic stance.

My real baptism of politics and one of the most importanttasks for our young leadership was to guide our fellowinmates through a period which could have led easily to

92

conflict and death. Our situation had become worse, evendangerous, when we had been transported again, this timefrom the transit camp at Quebec to our ‘permanent’destination in Canada, a camp near Sherbrooke. Here we hadto confront a very serious situation and the threat of beingshot. We had been dumped literally in what had been a railengine repair shed, a building perhaps 100 m x 40 m ,standing in grounds of a few acres surrounded by barbedwire. The shed was empty, but heated. At the far end therewas a water supply and a high pressure steam pipe whichcould be directed into a bucket of water and heat it. The floorwas rough concrete and there were some overhead lights.That was all. Hundreds of us were milling around inside thebuilding in a state of shock. After being deprived of ourfreedom for months, shipped across the Atlantic in appallingconditions this place, not fit for cattle, seemed to be our finaldestination in more senses than one. All we could dophysically was to circulate, but at least we could talk to oneanother and organise an executive committee. Within lessthan an hour we had re-established the committee structurewe had in Quebec and held our first meeting. We wereunanimous that we could not and would not stay in thisplace. There was a mass meeting addressed by thecommittee chairman, Mr Abrahamsohn, a business man anda brilliant executive. We then demanded to see the campcommandant to acquaint him of our views. The first reactionof the military was to send in the camp adjutant, a veryyoung officer, and the camp sergeant major, a reservist of anage that would ensure he would not be sent again overseas.He demanded to be addressed by us as ‘Sir’ and franklydeclared that we were enemy aliens and had to acceptwhatever conditions the Canadian army was providing forus. We had to obey and ‘co-operate’, or we would be treatednot only as enemy aliens, but as dangerous mutineers and besubject to martial law. For us the main problem was simplyto ensure our survival in reasonably tolerable conditions. Ourresponse was that if we were to be treated as enemy aliens

93

the army was obliged to observe the Geneva convention thatspecified minimum conditions for our internment. Actuallywe hated making reference to the Geneva Convention whichapplied to enemy aliens, a term we thought did not apply tous. We declared that failing proper treatment by the campcommander we would go on hunger strike. This threat wasmade easier for us as we could see no facilities where wecould eat. Nor was there any sight of food, and after arrivingearly in the morning it was now well past lunch time. Wewould not give in unless we were given the promise thattransport would be arranged out of this dirty and smellyplace. Tempers were rising and the adjutant and sergeantmajor withdrew. Almost immediately we saw that beyondthe barbed wire there were additional armed soldiersmounting machine guns directed at us. The situation wasbecoming very ugly, more so because there seemed to be noeasy way out.

It was the Cambridge group which helped to resolve ourconflict. It turned out that the young adjutant had onlyrecently returned to his native land from Cambridge to jointhe Canadian army and that he knew some of the Cambridgegroup from his undergraduate days. I saw him enter ourcompound, make straight for his former fellow students andenter into very animated discussions with them. It would bewrong to call these talks negotiations proper, but after sometime a clearer picture emerged why we were there and whatwere the reasons for our plight. We on the committee tooknote of the adjutant’s assurances that, as so often happens inthe army, we had arrived at the camp before plans to makethe camp habitable had been carried out. They weresupposed to include provision of showers, a whole kitchencomplex and many other amenities. We were told that thecommandant regretted our situation, but there simply was noway to get us out of the camp. He had to insist that we ‘co-operated’, a much overused term in the Canadian armylanguage, and accepted the state of affairs. There was fruit

94

available and sandwiches would be issued later. Stackedtwin army beds would be provided before night fall. Incommittee I advocated that we should desist from furtherhunger strike action, accept the camp commander’sassurance of good faith and agree to co-operate. This wascarried by a majority, some of the left-wingers, but not all,voting against it. We now had to convince all our campmembers to accept the committee’s decision. Abrahamsohnthen informed a mass meeting of the committee’srecommendation announcing that on its acceptance appleswould be distributed immediately enabling us to ‘anbeissen’(a Yiddish term, signifying the break of a fast).In due course the amenities promised by the campcommandant were delivered or constructed, and camppolitics turned away from struggling for the necessities oflife to achieving recognition as loyal, as opposed to enemy,aliens. I was re-elected and remained on the camp executivecommittee.

Our next action was to draft a memorandum similar incontent to that delivered to the Quebec camp commander.This time we also requested that the Canadian NationalCommittee for Refugees should be informed of our presence,asked to visit us and meet our committee. Since there werepeople in our camp who were neither Jewish nor politicalrefugees we had to find out how many non-genuine refugeeswere amongst us. Within days we formed an internal‘tribunal’ inviting before it those who we thought werepossible German sympathisers. None of those invitedrefused to appear. At the end of a series of interviews wefound that there were only a few about whose political ornational allegiance we were not sure. We then felt justifiedin our claim that almost all of us were genuine refugees fromNazi oppression.Nevertheless there were important differences between us.Fuchs, too, was a member of the executive committeerepresenting with others the political refugees, quite a few of

95

them communists. He was opposed by conservative Jewishmembers who regarded themselves as superior in theirclaims to be treated with sympathy by the authorities andopenly declared that to be jointly represented with thepolitical internees, most of them communists, wouldjeopardy their case for release. There was also a group ofJewish refugees who had formed an ‘emigration committee’.They declared that their aims were not to return to Britain,but to persuade the Canadian authorities to let them stay inCanada or let them emigrate to the United States where someof them had been entered in the quota system.

A major dissension arose in the committee when we heardthat representatives of the Canadian National Committee forRefugees had agreed to meet us. The ‘emigration’ committeewas registering those who did not want to return to Britainand demanded to be represented separately from the campexecutive. This committee insisted they were speaking for asignificant number of refugees who were on the waiting listfor immigration to the USA and of others who now being inCanada intended to stay in the country and hoped to beallowed to immigrate directly from the camp into Canada.They wanted the list of names registered with them to behanded to the camp commander. This caused a fiercereaction in the committee from the left-wingers, who wereespecially suspicious of the Jewish refugees. The distrustwas partially personal, because some of the political refugeeswere certain that one of the Jewish members had in Viennadenounced left-wingers to the Gestapo. Fuchs and his friendsthought that all of us should be treated equally and be sentback to Britain who had shipped us to Canada under falsepretences. They thought also that asking to stay in Canadawould be tantamount to refusing to support Britain in herwar effort, to admit that we were not in sympathy withBritain, perhaps even doubtful of her willingness orcapability to prosecute the war. Accusations of disloyalty toBritain and alternatively to the cause of the refugees were

96

exchanged and became very bitter. The emigrationcommittee then stated that they did not feel represented bythe camp executive and asked for direct access to the campcommandant.

The left-wingers in the camp now feared that the emigrationcommittee was asking for separate representation because itwanted to isolate the political refugees, labelling all of themcommunists, from the Jewish refugees who could then betreated with greater empathy by the authorities. Although Ithought that the fears of the political refugees wereexaggerated, I sensed that there was an attempt by some ofthe Jewish internees to differentiate between them and thepolitical refugees, a kind of separation into first and secondclass internees.In any camp it would not have been unusual to find a factionhoping to gain advantages over another from their jailers byemphasising its superiority. I am thinking of my ownexperience in the Huyton camp where a cousin of mine bymarriage looked me up and told me that ‘of course’ he wouldbe released before me, because he was an orthodox Jew andtherefore more ‘reliable’ than I.My attitude was that it would be disastrous if we split intoopposing factions. For me there were no ‘better’ or ‘worse’refugees, but all of us had to make common cause. We Jewshad been persecuted by the Germans and were grateful andrelieved to be in Britain. Our loyalty was implicit in ourhope to be protected by Britain, and it was obvious that wewere opposed to Hitler and the Germans who wanted todestroy us. I thought also that the political refugees had atleast as good a claim as we had to be considered loyal. Theyhad made a critical choice in their voluntary stand againstthe Nazis dictated by their conscience and had accepted theconsequences, namely persecution, danger to their lives andexile. I thought they deserved respect for the moral stancethey had adopted - and they had certainly gained mine. Theycould claim to be at least as ‘good’ as the Jewish refugees. I

97

eventually persuaded the executive committee that theemigration committee had a case, moreover that this caseshould be put to the Canadian Refugee’s agency who hadagreed to meet us. A protracted opposition by left-wingerscould lead to an undesirable and undignified split betweenthe Jewish and the political refugees.Eventually a compromise was brokered. Instead of all of ourexecutive meeting the Canadian Refugees’ Committee,individual delegates should be chosen reflecting the careorganisations which had sponsored them in Britain. Forinstance I was chosen as a delegate because I was registeredwith the Scottish National Council for Refugees, others withthe Society for Protection of Science and Learning, with theCzech Trust Fund, the International Student Service, theGerman Jewish Aid Committee and so on. Thus thedelegation included members of the camp committee as wellas of the emigration committee who were then able to puttheir case. The delegation was led by Count von Lingen forreasons I cannot remember. We got a very sympathetichearing from the chairman of the Canadian Committee forRefugees. He assured us that it was his Committee’s brief tolook after all refugees in Canada, Jewish and non-Jewish, -and at that moment he looked at me, thinking perhaps that Idid not look Jewish. We thought his visit a great success. Wehad been recognised for what we were and we felt certainthat we had acquired a new and sympathetic advocate whowould present our case to the Canadian military and the civilauthorities in Britain.

Shortly after I resigned from the executive, because the workbecame largely administrative and routine, and gave me littletime for some reading of my physics books. Soon after Ireceived a letter by Air Mail from the Royal Societyinforming me that my second paper had been accepted andasking me whether I would agree to some minor alterationsto the MS which was enclosed. I did what was necessary andwent to the camp office asking for my amended paper to be

98

sent to Britain by Air Mail. This request was turned down. Iwas told that new regulations allowed internees’ letters to besent by surface mail only. My corrected paper never arrivedin London. Fortunately I had left a copy in Edinburgh andcould send another amended MS to the Royal Society whenlater I returned to Britain. But for this I had to wait anotherfew months.Although my mother was not interned because of her age shehad to leave Edinburgh which was now a ‘Special Area’where enemy aliens were not permitted to reside. TheLiberal Jewish Refugee Committee housed her in Londonjust in time to experience the Luftwaffe’s raids. I was glad tohave a letter from her assuring me that she was well. Alsoshe gave me the news that I, in common with internees withother relevant qualifications, was to be released and broughtback to Britain as a matter of priority. This was subject onlyto a satisfactory interview by a senior Home Office civilservant who was being sent to Canada.

I was in the first batch of about a hundred sent back toBritain. We had been selected without discriminationbetween political and Jewish refugees, but none of thepeople who had applied to emigrate direct to Canada wereincluded. We travelled in closed rail coaches under armedguards to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and for about two weekswere accommodated, behind guarded doors, in a modernoffice block that had been made habitable, until a convoyhad been assembled. We then boarded a ship of aboutthirteen thousand tons, which had some passengeraccommodation in addition to cargo holds. Once aboard wewere told not to close the cabin doors, but secure them by ahook and chain arrangement, so that in an emergency weshould be able to open them with little difficulty. In hiswelcoming address the captain told us that he was expectingus to conform to the ship’s discipline and that he would nothesitate to enforce it if necessary. There was a naval officeron board in charge of signals so that communications with

99

the convoy commander were ensured. The only militaryperson on board was an army captain of the Royal ScotsFusiliers, a Liverpool solicitor in civil life. At mealtimes weall dined together in shifts in a dining room, where the armycaptain turned out to be a most entertaining and charmingcompanion. The navy lieutenant impressed all of us by hisability to sit at the table and not slide off as most of us did inall directions when propelled by the ship’s movements in avery rough sea. We soon found out his secret, an ‘old navycustom’ as he told us. He had put a piece of toast under oneof the legs of his chair such that the friction was strongenough to ensure his comfort. It took us about two weeks tocross the Atlantic. We slept little thinking of the U-boatthreat and spent much of the time playing poker forcigarettes rather than retiring to our bunks. After a few dayswe took our turns on look-out for enemy ships. From time totime, too, we saw a British warship exchanging light signalsthrough the sea mist with the lead ship of our convoy, ahaunting and at the same time comforting experience, but wesaw no enemy ships.Our convoy had taken the northerly route so that the firstland I saw was the North West coast of Scotland. We thenpassed along the Scottish coast on our way to Liverpool, butwhen we were near Oban I had a wonderful feeling of homecoming. I turned to the British sailor who was mycompanion on this watch and told him that a hundred milesor so to the east was my home in Edinburgh. He probablydid not understand what I felt and all I heard from him was agrunt. Going up the Mersey in mid-January 1941 wasdifferent from approaching Quebec in the sunlight of earlyautumn. It was night, dark and misty, and only a few shadedlights could be seen through the blackout blinking from thesilhouettes of the ships docked along our route. The first signof life we encountered was the wailing of the air raid sirens.We were back in Britain.The ship was met by an armed guard ready to take over fromour ‘guard’. Their officer looked a bit perplexed when he

100

asked where our military guard was and our army captaintold him ‘I am the guard’. After coming ashore a polite armysergeant addressing me as ‘Sir’, processed my newdocuments, handing out a new ration book and a railwayticket. Both Fuchs and I were informed that we were allowedto return to Edinburgh in spite of its status as a special area.In due course my mother, too, was allowed to join me thereagain.

101

Chapter 9 - A Small University College

in War Time

Fuchs and I were received with much warmth by our friendsin Edinburgh in the Physics and Mathematics departmentsand with relief on our safe survival of two Atlantic crossings.But what next? We had been granted priority release so thatour qualifications could be put to good use in Britain’s wareffort. Edinburgh University Appointments Board could notfind a job for me, except school teaching for which somepositions were advertised. Professor Born offered to applyfor a grant for me to continue research, but I was not keen ondoing research at a time when British young scientists had tointerrupt their careers and join the forces or do other warwork.The Appointments Board told me that as far as war workwas concerned in industry or in public researchestablishments the employment situation would change, butat that moment ‘foreigners need not apply’. How long wouldI have to wait?An appointment of Temporary Lecturer in Physics atUniversity (then) College Southampton was advertised inNature. I applied and was appointed. Almost simultaneouslyFuchs was appointed to a ‘hush-hush’ job which at the timewas top secret. I think there were several reasons for mypreferment at Southampton: I had met the permanentSouthampton Professor of Physics, A C Menzies, atWhittaker’s departmental tea and I met him again when hevisited the Southampton physics department about a yearafter my appointment. He was on leave from the College forthe duration of the war and had been made a Group Captainin the Royal Air Force working in some scientific capacity.He seemed fully briefed about my teaching in the Edinburghmathematics and applied mathematics departments and mywork on the phonon spectrum and had probably been

102

consulted when I applied for the job. Another reason for myappointment could have been that the then temporarySouthampton professor, Professor A M Taylor, whoseresearch field was in optics, wanted a man with experiencein optics, because he intended to translate and re-edit Born’s‘Optik’. He knew that I had previous experience in Vienna inoptical measurements and also thought I could help him withthe translation.Edinburgh University had good relations with Southamptonwhere not a few appointments had been made on Whittaker’srecommendations. Not long before he had stronglysupported the appointment of a young member of his staffstill in his twenties, Harold Ruse, as Professor ofMathematics in Southampton. He would become my goodfriend.

I always joked afterwards that at that time no sane Britishperson would, given other choices, choose to go toSouthampton, because this city with its important port wassubject to very heavy attacks by the Luftwaffe in 1941.When I arrived in Southampton by train I heard a railwayporter shout “Southampton Central”, but on looking out thewindow I could see no station buildings on my side of thetrack. The night before about 20 German land mines hadbeen parachuted on to the city. The tracks and the dockswere not hit, but the High Street looked a sorry mess to mewhen Professor Taylor took me in a taxi to the physicsdepartment.

My start in teaching in British universities coincided with thebeginning of a new phase in the development of BritishHigher Education, and Southampton University Collegeproved to be an interesting experience. It was my firstcontact with an institution that had not yet reached the sizeor status of a university such as I had been acquainted withup to then. University College Southampton, withNottingham and Leicester, was one of the latest additions to

103

the Higher Education establishments in Britain. Unlike thenew universities created about twenty years later, whichwere prestigious from their inception, these colleges had stillto establish themselves in the public esteem. The Collegehad just built a new library which was the central piece ofthe campus. In it I discovered the bronze head of ClaudeMontefiore, the founder of my Liberal Jewish Synagogue, atestimony to the donations he and other Jewish benefactors,including Lord Swaythling, had made. A new physicsdepartment building had been completed just before myarrival. There was also a new refectory and union building.Other departments had to make do with older buildings.Some auxiliary activities still took place in huts left overfrom the first world war when they had served as hospitalunits. There were new halls of residence and for some time Istayed in the hall at Swaythling, a suburb of Southamptonwhere once Lord Swaythling, Lily Montagu’s father, hadhad his home.

The war brought about two kinds of changes in Britishuniversities. Firstly the universities were put on a warfooting and there was some contraction of their usualactivities. Many degree courses were curtailed as graduatesand staff were seconded to war time assignments or joinedthe fighting forces, and the call-up to the forces at firstreduced the number of students. Secondly the armed forces,defence research establishments and industry neededgraduates and established scientists in ever growingnumbers. Hence the contraction of normal activities wasalmost immediately followed by the introduction of newcourses. Faculties devised two-year instead of the usualthree-year courses which would deliver a minimumeducational standard for a sufficiently large number of menand women needed in modern warfare. The country requiredtechnicians and electronic and other engineers to run the warmachine, and the universities would run special courses forpersonnel already in the armed forces to enable them to

104

handle the increasingly sophisticated equipment they were tohandle on active service. Also the country’s supply of newteachers could not be interrupted, and students accepted bythe (then) Board of Education were allowed to complete analmost ‘normal’ degree course.If pre-war there was perhaps a feeling that universityexpansion was desirable, but could proceed at a leisurelypace, it now became clear that the expansion was vital to thewar effort and had to be rapid. It also would have to proceedat a very fast pace after the war to meet the requirements ofthe post war world. Post war planning for Higher Educationbegan just at the time when the war made new demands onthe universities and showed up their insufficiencies. Beforethe war it was envisaged that in due course the collegeswould expand with some aid from government and much aidfrom private sources, but after the beginning of the war itbecame clear that leisurely change was just not good enough.It had been realised that the British higher education system,‘though of world quality at the top, was just not producingthe number of graduates a modern country needed, andresearch facilities and graduate work were being outpaced inthe United States and on the continent.The expansion prompted by the requirements of war gave anadditional stimulus to the planning of post war developmentof Higher Education. The country began to realise that to besuccessful in the post-war world no less than in war, it wouldhave to develop a strong potential of large numbers of highlyeducated women and men.

Of course during the war universities had to convertthemselves into full time teaching institutions at the expenseof all other activities, such as research, to comply with theemergency demands. Larger universities could keep up amodicum of research staffed mainly by older and otherpeople exempt from war duties and by foreign nationals.Smaller colleges such as Southampton were teaching full

105

time and could not carry on with even the small researcheffort they had tried to carry out in peacetime.And this was the rub. Planners realised that special emphasishad to be laid on the development of the smaller colleges tobuild up their research potential to a much higher level thanthey had achieved before the war. Without research andsubsequent publication of their results young scientists,people like myself, would lose their chance of promotion inthe university system. It is my experience of working atSouthampton where I had a close view of the situation ofpromising young academics, that increased my interest inuniversity development and similarly in science policy.While the expansion of research in the smaller institutionswas a necessary condition for their survival as universities ofsome standing, even the larger universities had difficulty inmounting a research effort commensurate with theirreputation. Senior researchers in Cambridge complained oftheir large teaching load and would have liked more time forresearch.University staff and others worked on post war planningduring the war in such spare time as they had. They acceptedthat there was a need for a much greater research effort thanhad been the custom previously in universities. I couldcontribute to the planning from my experience of largeruniversities and comparison with my present knowledge of asmall college that clearly needed more finance than it hadever known if it were to do valuable research.All these post war planning exercises were carried on in analmost light hearted optimism by young scientists dreamingabout the post war world and Britain’s expansion of herhigher education. The war had still to be won, and nobodyknew whether the country would be able to afford thefinance required for these plans, but equally nobody seemedto have doubts of a bright future. At that time only the Battleof Britain had been won, but the army still had to be rebuiltand made into an efficient fighting force again only monthsafter the Dunkerque evacuation.

106

One should realise also that planning for post-war expansionwas done against a background of pre-war British publicopinion that was by no means convinced of the benefits of anexpansion of higher education. People at large still thoughtthat a few elite universities were all, or almost all, thecountry needed. A good school education, yes, but highereducation for the masses? There was even scoffing aboutAmerican attitudes which put a high value on collegeeducation. Neither were many employers convinced of thevalue to them of graduates from other than prestigeuniversities. Before the war I saw advertisements in the pressasking for graduates of Oxford, Cambridge or LondonUniversity only. The advertiser did not seem to valuegraduates from Manchester or Birmingham.If the public accepted such attitudes it is not surprising thatthe College had suffered from being low in the pecking orderof universities. Before the war it had to struggle to attracteven undergraduate students. What made it attractive tosome extent was that, because the College had as yet notbeen granted a University Charter and therefore could notconfer its own degrees, its undergraduates sat for theExternal Degree of London University. Pre-war the Head ofthe Education Department had to travel all over the South ofEngland and further afield to persuade Heads of schools tosend their qualified school leavers to the College. His mainselling point was that he could offer good teaching and theprospect of a London University degree. In those days,unbelievable today, at the beginning of the first term staffwould have sat in the Great Hall anxiously waiting for newstudents, never knowing quite how many freshers wouldcome to register.

When war broke out the Principal had thought at first that, asin the first world war, even fewer would-be students wouldbe willing to register, since most young people would becalled up so that the College would have to close down for

107

the duration. Quite the reverse, however, happened when allhigher education establishments including Southamptonwere given a new role, namely to run extra courses toovercome the shortage of scientists, engineers, techniciansand to maintain the supply of teachers.

Before the war, although the Prime Minister Chamberlainhad claimed that by the touch of a button the British warmachine would be ready, the manpower requirements of amodern war and of civil defence had been neglected and hadto be addressed with utmost dispatch. Far from closing downthe College for the duration of the war due to the expectedcall-up of students, as the Principal had feared at itsoutbreak, both the number of courses and student numbersincreased dramatically in Southampton, especially as theCollege had unused capacity and staff of the right quality.I found that staff at Southampton were ambitious for thefuture of the College and hard working. The scarcity ofacademic positions nation wide had induced first classacademics to apply to even the smallest colleges, and hadresulted in highly qualified and well-motivated people beingappointed. The Principal would never fail to point out to newmembers of staff, more particularly in the Arts faculty, thatSouthampton was a good springboard for taking off toacademic positions in older universities. In fact quite anumber of the academics I knew during the war at theCollege were appointed to senior positions in otheruniversities later. Some had already made their reputationlike the physical chemist N K Adam, FRS. Others, mainly inthe arts faculty, ripe for promotion were Simeon Potter, theauthority on Beowulf, Leishman, the great authority onRilke, Lawton in the French Department, Rubinstein inHistory and many more. The standard and the intensity ofteaching were kept high, and the good London degreesawarded reflected in some measure the quality of theirteaching. The reverse side of the emphasis on teaching at

108

Southampton before the war was that research was given aminor role.

The Physics Department in Southampton played its part inthe war effort by running a large variety of courses. When Ijoined it the department had classes, too, for army officersrequiring technical and scientific qualifications needed byradar and other electronic personnel employed in a moderndefence force. One of my first assignments was to teachelectricity and magnetism to male and female army officerswith some scientific background - most of them had studiedbiology or other sciences at school - prior to their training asradar officers. It was a change from the Canadian days whenI had to stand to attention in front of a sergeant major. Thistime I had army officers up to the rank of major in myclasses who called me ‘Sir’. Being in charge of them I evenhad to grant permission to a female captain to take leave ofabsence so that she could get married.These special classes lasted until students then going throughtheir two-year courses had successfully completed their wartime diploma and were ready to be commissioned as, forinstance, radar officers in the navy.I liked teaching physics students, even those reading for theLondon University General Degree in physics whichrequired teaching to a strictly circumscribed syllabus. Here Ihad to rely on some pretty dull textbooks to make sure thatnothing of the syllabus was omitted. However I soon foundthat adding some more original material would stimulate mystudents to see beyond the limits of the syllabus.It so happened that after my first year the physics GeneralDegree results were the best the College had achieved ever.Although I hoped that some of this was due to my teaching itwas also due in no small measure to the intake of aboveaverage students, who in pre-war days would have gone toother universities and who for various reasons were notaccepted by the university of their first choice.

109

If the war had made obvious that the armed forces andindustry experienced a shortage of scientists, engineers andtechnicians which had to be addressed immediately in ad-hoc short courses, the Air Force was more concerned aboutthe general education of its new officer cadets. It held thatthe education standards delivered by the schools were lowerthan those required by RAF officers who were wanted inlarge numbers. The Air Ministry decided that there was notime to wait for new graduates. It arranged that its cadetsshould spend six months in a university in specially designedcourses in order to gain some acquaintance with academia.All these initiatives set off a new wave in higher educationand contributed to a public awareness of the importance ofhigher education that resulted after the war in quadruplingpre-war student numbers to more than two hundred thousandat the beginning of the nineteen fifties.

Southampton was one of the many colleges deemed suitablefor providing courses for the Air Force cadets, and I was putin charge of designing the physics course for those who hadopted for the science curriculum. I did not treat it as a schoolsubject, but showed many demonstration experiments,similar to those shown to me when I was a first year studentin Vienna, but telescoped into six months. I also used mylectures to paint a picture of modern physics with the newideas which had emerged during the preceding twenty years.The boys - there were no women cadets - loved it, althoughtheir commanding officer, obviously an ‘arts’ product of aminor public school who could not differentiate betweenphysics and chemistry, still called me ‘Professor Stinks’.When I faced about fifty of the cadets for the first time theylooked apprehensive, but they soon found that they did notget the usual sixth form syllabus from which some hadsuffered previously. In fact we - I was only ten years olderthan they were - had great fun and the lectures must have lefta lasting impression with them. Well after the war I wasapproached by some of these former cadets, the last time

110

during the interval of a Hallé orchestra concert, wanting totalk to me about my Southampton lectures. Years after that ayoung man stopped me at a function to tell me that his fatherwho had been one of the cadets still spoke about me. Whenlater I had applied for my naturalisation, Professor Taylorspecifically mentioned my work with the RAF cadets in hissupporting letter. He also mentioned my enthusiasm forteaching when after the war I applied for a lectureship inLeeds.

During the war there were few of the social meetings andother advantages normally associated with college life, butquite a few interesting people combined their war work inthe region with visits to the College. They were people ofvarious walks of life ranging from C P Snow, in his thencapacity of head of the Central (scientific and technical)Register, to the curator of the National Gallery in charge ofstoring art treasures in caves in Wales.Later I was fortunate that committee work would often takeme to London. The Government realised the importance formorale to keep a flourishing arts life going in the capital.The arts life was very much reduced in Southampton, but Icould often manage to go to a concert in London andsometimes a theatre. Unfortunately the timing of mymeetings made it impossible for me to hear Myra Hess (laterDame Myra) performing in her lunch time concerts in theNational Gallery where everybody in the neighbourhoodwanting to hear her could just drop in and listen to her. Themain source of entertainment and community life for all ofus was the BBC, and its role in strengthening Britain’smorale was paramount.I do not think the BBC itself realised how much itstransmissions contributed to raising the morale in Nazi-occupied countries. At least I never heard this mentionedwhen the BBC recently celebrated its wartime record. Therewas much mentioning of the messages sent in code to thecontinent, but I know that other transmissions also, without

111

any military content, made themselves felt, for instance inFrance. I was astounded when my wife told me after the warthat her mother, like probably thousands more in France,loved tuning in to the BBC during the occupation, at greatpersonal risk to herself since this was not allowed, althoughshe did not understand a word of English. She did it duringthe darkest hours of the war, just to hear the British laugh.Ours was not a defeated country to judge from the roar oflaughter she heard. One of the radio shows could have been,I think, ‘ITMA’ with the famous comedian Tommy Handley.I do not think we in this country ever realised the effect theseshows had in encouraging our friends abroad to believe inBritain.Cricket fans may be interested to hear that I met John Arlottwho was to become the famous cricket commentator afterthe war. At that time he was a police constable working inthe Special Branch. He seemed very keen to meet me andhad a good look at the books I had in my room in the hall ofresidence where I stayed. They in fact belonged to theprevious occupant of the room who had gone off to warservice. I was told that Arlott was very interested in firsteditions. Unfortunately for him there were none of these onmy shelves, nor any subversive material of interest toSpecial Branch. Nevertheless he once thought he had goodreason for arresting me. Southampton had been declared a’defence area’ which meant that people were not to use - oraliens not even to possess - telescopes or field glasses orcameras in such areas. One day, when I was coaching, fromthe cox seat, the college ‘eight’ Arlott appeared with anotherofficer, hailed me from the banks of the river Itchen andasked me to bring the boat alongside. This was not an easymanoeuvre, because tide and current had to be negotiated.He then asked me whether I had been on the river theprevious day, because it had been reported that a mancoaching an eight from the bank had been seen to use fieldglasses. We had not been on the river on that day. I told himthat Winchester College had probably been out with their

112

boat, and it must have been their coach on the banks whoused field glasses. I never coached from the bank, but onlyfrom the cox position. He seemed rather disappointed that hecould not catch me out, and I was told afterwards that he hadbeen in touch with Winchester to have confirmation of whatI had told him.

In 1942 air raids were still frequent, although not as frequentas the German news media would have it. Several times mymother wrote she had heard there had been heavy raids onSouthampton, whereas we had not even had as much as anair raid warning. Nevertheless there were raids. At first onewas not greatly affected by the terrible sounds of bombsdropping and the gun fire. I took cover, but these raids didnot last too long, and soon after I would return to whatever Ihad been doing before. However, after perhaps a dozen raidsI had exceeded my tolerance limit and I found myselfshaking and taking some time to get back to normalactivities. Other people had similar reactions. The warden ofthe students’ hall in Swaythling, the Reverend HerbertLivesey wanted to show his contempt of the Luftwaffe.When most other people took shelter during the air raids hewalked about the hall’s lawn, his cloak flying, whilstproclaiming: ‘I am exhilarated!’ amongst all the noise fromthe anti-aircraft guns. He might have been fortified by hisafter-dinner port which could turn this normally wise maninto a daring hero, but even he took shelter after a while.Fortunately the raids began to decrease in frequency after myfirst year in Southampton and decreased quite steeply duringthe following years. At the end of June, near the shortestnight of the year, however, the Luftwaffe seemed to make apoint of coming over with terrible regularity.

Not all consequences of the war were unpleasant. Allmembers of staff had to take on fire watching duties after theLuftwaffe had introduced their new tactic of droppingincendiary bombs. Staff were divided into squads of 12 who

113

would have to spend the night in the College. Harry Howell,the person responsible for organising the civil defence of theCollege, made me a member of a squad which he called themost attractive group of academics in the College. Indeed wespent many a night in animated conversations, many inspiredby Mr Dudley, an Irishman and brilliant raconteur, thentemporary head of the Education Department. When the airraids decreased in frequency we had fewer interruptions ofour squad’s discussions of many fascinating subjects. Ofcourse when my duty as air raid warden allowed I tried toget to the nearest shelter. On one occasion an air raidprovided me with a disagreeable personal experience of theDoppler Effect. I was on patrol in the College grounds whenI saw a German aircraft caught at the apex of severalconverging searchlight beams. I was impressed that anti-aircraft technology had become so successful that it couldilluminate enemy bombers with such accuracy. Secondsafterwards, however, the aircraft discharged its bombs. Isuddenly realised that the pitch of the bomb noise was risingand not getting lower. Most people watching an aerialbombardment on film or television only hear a lowering ofthe pitch before the impact of the bomb. Knowing the causeof the Doppler effect of the rising pitch I immediately knewthat the bomb was coming towards me. There was no time tomake for a shelter which was only a few feet away. I divedand was flat on the ground in less than a second. Fortunatelythe bomb landed about 50 metres away from me.

On the whole the College did not suffer serious damage. Oneexception was the air raid shelter which the clerk of thecollege office of works had designed and built. It did notsurvive the first air raid. It collapsed under its own weightwhen the anti-aircraft guns opened fire. Fortunately nobodywas in it at the time. From then on the College built itsshelters following designs approved by the Home Office.Dr Harry Howell was the College’s civil defencecoordinator. His main position in the College was that of a

114

lecturer in physics. We became friends when I was allotted adesk in his room which we then shared until he left tobecome Head of the Physics department at the (then)Bradford Technical College, later to become BradfordUniversity. Harry was the first of my academic colleagueswho openly expressed his leftish views to me. At least, so hesaid, they had been his views before the war. The son of aNorthumbrian miner, making his way through scholarshipsto do research in spectroscopy at Newcastle University, hehad been appointed at Southampton just before the war. Heconfessed to me that he had become totally cynical after thefascist victory in Spain. He felt that there was just a slimchance for progressive ideas to succeed if Britain won thewar. But as far as party politics were concerned he had lostinterest. However, because of his past experience he showeda great understanding of my idealistic views of the futureand very much helped me to integrate into college life and inthe larger community.

I had expected more German air raids when the preparationsfor D-day, the invasion of the continent, started. This wasnot the case even if the German High Command gave theimpression that they had raided Southampton much moreoften than in fact they did. It would have beenunderstandable, because Southampton’s port with itssurroundings of the New Forest and other rural districts wasfast becoming one of the most important staging areaspreparing for the invasion, especially of American troopsmany of whom were transported to England by the ‘Queens’,Mary and Elisabeth, the big liners which docked in the portwhen they had arrived with large numbers of Americanpersonnel. We could always tell, because they made theirpresence known by long blasts of their sirens, the only(unofficial) announcement of their presence.By 1943 the clamour for opening the ‘second front’ tosupport the Russian allies fighting on their ‘first’ front in theEast had risen both in political circles and among the public.

115

People on the hard left even began to cast doubt on whetherthe allies were really thinking of an invasion of thecontinent. However the vast majority of the public acceptedthe government’s assurance that Britain and America wouldstrike, but only when the preparations were complete. Otherpolitical debates took place also, the main points here beingthe avowed war aims. The allies had decided not to make thesame mistake as they had done after the first world war,namely to accept the German capitulation before an alliedsoldier had set foot on German soil. After the first world warGerman propaganda had succeeded in convincing thoseGermans prepared to believe it - and there were many - thatGermany had not been defeated in the field. InsteadGermany had to give in to the allies because of the‘Dolchstoss‘ (knife in the back) administered by theinternational conspiracy of Jews and allied financialspeculators and crooks. This theme was never abandoned inthe inter-war years and vigorously driven home by Hitler.This time, so the allies had decided, Germany would beasked for unconditional surrender, effective only when alliedtroops had been seen by the Germans on German soil. Thepolitical Left in Britain did not like this war aim. Theyargued that Germans should be offered, even before theinvasion took place, the vision of a new democraticGermany by the forgiving allies, hoping thereby toencourage internal resistance in Germany to Hitler.However, even the Soviets were not convinced by thesearguments especially as whatever internal resistance againstHitler there might have been, seemed to come from theGerman Right, and in any case failed to deliver successfulbomb attacks on Hitler.

It is interesting to note that in the political debates at the timethere never was any reference to the existence of camps likeAuschwitz, although towards the end of the war there weresome vague references by the government to atrocities andthe will to punish those responsible for them. But such

116

pronouncements were not followed up by significant details.In retrospect one can only conclude that there must havebeen a deliberate policy of the Allies to conceal these horrorsduring this period.As to the invasion, the opening of the second front, we inSouthampton knew that preparations for it were serious, infact we thought the invasion would take place in 1943, ayear earlier than it did. Taking a stroll in the countryside onecould see, wherever there was some reasonable air cover,masses of tents quartering soldiers and of motorised militaryhard ware. In the height of the summer they suddenlymoved, many of them right into Southampton. Trucks andtanks started to park in the streets, leaving only one line forother traffic. When this happened we thought they weregoing to embark and cross over to France. We were wrong:this was a gigantic exercise in preparing for the invasion, andI at least was impressed how painstakingly serious the allieswere preparing for D-day.I was impressed also by what was for me a demonstration ofallied air superiority, because all these troop movementscould not have taken place if the German Luftwaffe hadbeen able to mount effective air attacks. We had a few airraid alarms, again near the height of the summer, but thatwas all. Later, mainly after the invasion, the Germans beganto rely more on their rocketry, but this did not seem tointerfere with allied military preparations. For thosethreatened by the Mark 1 type of rockets the mostfrightening moment was the time interval between the rocketmotor stopping and the final explosion. One heard the noiseof the approaching ‘doodlebug’, as we called it, and I evensaw one quite near, but one did not know how near to us thebomb would glide during that interval before it exploded. Incontrast the Mark 2 rocket exploded without warning, andthere was no such pause of terror, but immediate destruction.Those flashes in the distance were more like lightening forwhich one gives thanks, because seeing them meant that onehad been spared.

117

Professor Karl Przibram

Courtesy of the Östererichische Akademieder Wissenschaften

118

Professor Max Born, FRS

Nobel Laureate

119

Sir Edmond Whittaker, FRS

Courtesy of the School of Mathematics,University of Edinburgh

120

Professor Lord Blackett, FRS

Nobel Laureate

ByWilliam C Evans

121

© The Royal Society

122

Professor E C Stoner, FRS

123

Professor Cecil Powell, FRS

Nobel Laureate

124

Pair Creation. Cloud chamber photograph by

Blackett and Occhialini.

The tracks of the two particles appearing demonstrate thecreation of particles of mass due to the energy E of the

invisible photon confirming the E=Mc2

relationship.The opposite curvature of the two particle tracks caused bythe magnetic field applied and their ranges confirm that oneof the particles is an electron, and the other the anti-particledemanded by Dirac's theory, the ‘positron.'

125

Diagram of Extensive Air Shower

(not to scale)

126

Cloudchamber photograph of an Extensive

Air Shower taken by J GWilson and B Lovell

127

Chapter 10 - Planning The Future Of

Science

Not long after my appointment in Southampton I attendedthe meeting in London of the British Association for theAdvancement of Science at the end of September 1941. Itwas an opportunity to see again old friends and formerstudents, as well as Professor Born who gave a paper onScience and Higher Education. Fuchs, who by that time hadleft Edinburgh to take up his very secret appointment wasthere as well. During a break he and Professor Born retiredto a bench in St James’ Park, no doubt to discuss aspects ofFuchs’ secret war work, whereas I and my other Edinburghfriends walked and talked in the park about science and thewar.

The conference’s topic was ‘Science and World Order’, buta more adequate title would have been ‘Science and thePost-War World’. It was a most extraordinary meeting totake place in Britain at that time. Here we were, after we hadbeen defeated on the continent, without an army, only justbeating off Germany in the Battle of Britain and now seeingthe horrors of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. TheUS had not yet experienced Pearl Harbour, the kick in thepants, as Sir Herbert Grierson called it, that propelled theminto the war and made them our allies. The vast majority ofus had no idea of how we would beat the Germans, yet wewere full of optimism aided by a wonderful Indian summer.During the lunch time breaks conference members wouldspill over from the Royal Institution into Piccadilly and StJames’ Park . Here crowds of allied soldiers, sailors and airpersonnel would mingle with civilians in summer attire inthe sunshine. All of us were light hearted and convinced ofvictory and showed no doubt that a prosperous and just post-war world would be built. A united and progressive worldseemed assured, and this feeling was echoed at the

128

conference. The selection of chairmen of the sessionssymbolised co-operation in the post war world. TheAmerican ambassador, J G Winant, presided over the session’Science and Human Needs’, the Soviet ambassador, MMaisky, chaired the session on Science and World Planning,Dr E Benes, the Czechoslovak president, chaired the sessionon Science and Technological Advance, Dr Wellington Koo,the Chinese ambassador, the session on Science and Post-War Relief and H G Wells the final session on Science andthe World Mind. Some of the greatest personages in Scienceand Technology who were able to get to London werepresent, and supporting messages were received from AlbertEinstein, James Conant and the Academy of Sciences of theSoviet Union among others.What had amazed the organisers was the enthusiasticresponse they had received once their intention to hold sucha conference was announced. The presence in London of somany representative scientists and experts of manynationalities and the demand for tickets from distinguishedwomen and men of science in this country completelychanged the scope and the location of the plannedconference. The organising committee had at first thought ofa discussion meeting to be held in one of the governmentresearch establishments. Instead it was decided to hold theconference in London in the beautiful lecture theatre of theRoyal Institution. Even so this large theatre could notaccommodate all who had applied to take part.

The British Association’s ‘Division for the Social andInternational Relations of Science’ responsible for theconference had been in existence only since 1938. One of itsobjectives was to study the effects of advances in scienceupon social conditions. Up to then such matters were thoughtnot to deserve a special forum in Britain. However thevarious economic ‘Plans’ introduced and carried out by theSoviets and the American experiment in establishing theTennessee Valley Authority had stimulated the interest of

129

scientists in planning on a large scale for the benefit of anation. The war had already shown that planning for itssuccessful prosecution was essential. Now the debate inBritain was beginning on plans to benefit the post-warsociety or for the improvement of existing programmes. Theconference responded to the growing realisation thatplanning in some form would have to continue in the postwar period to develop and safeguard what is best in humancivilisation and to feel ‘confidence in a higher destiny forhumanity’, in the words of the organisers.

Some plans discussed at the conference commanded generalagreement, as for instance the lecture given by Sir JohnBoyd Orr of the Rowett Research Institute who so clearlyspoke on the world’s food problems which would have to befaced after the war. Many other subjects were discussedwhere science would have to find a post-war solution. Theseincluded wildlife, town and country planning, domesticeconomies, statesmanship itself, and many other problems ofhuman needs. Environmental problems and their urgencywere not given the detailed treatment they receive today.

A much more general survey was outlined by Professor J DBernal. Explicitly taking as an example the Soviet Union heasked for a ‘general plan’ such that the lessons learned inwar would be applied to social and governmental affairs inpeace time. He defined as the common end the maximumutilisation of inherent social and individual humancapacities. Realising, however, that such aims would have tobe given a concrete form, he advocated as a first step anInternational Resource Office collecting data on material,technical and human resources. To me he gave theimpression that he was not fully convinced himself of thefeasibility of a ‘general plan’ for a long time to come. HisResource Office proposal seemed to acknowledge that ageneral plan could be a long time away from realisation.

130

I thought there was an echo of my, and probably others’,scepticism implied in the much more pragmatic proposals ofProfessor A V (later Lord) Hill’s, who at that time combinedhis scientific standing with the office of the Secretary of theRoyal Society and that of a Member of Parliament. Hisbrilliant achievements as a scientist and as governmentadviser and Hitler’s aggression had made him, as hemodestly claimed, a ‘general busybody’. However, hisexample was not, as he saw it, a role model for the greatnumber of scientists that would be required in the future.Rather he asked for an input of science and scientists atcabinet level and in every government department andresearch organisation. He could point to examples wheresuch interaction had been successful in governmentdepartments and to failures where individual defencedepartments had refused such co-operation. One of theproposals he made was that operational research would havean increasingly important role to play in peacetime. A noteof warning about over-enthusiasm for economic planningwas introduced also by the economist Maurice Dobb whodrew attention to the mistakes often made by economicplanners in the past and warned that detrimental sectionaland monopolistic influences should not be underrated infuture planning.A valuable proposal made by Professor Hill and others wasthe creation of a reserve pool of scientists. This idea was infact adopted for a time after the war in the Harwell atomicestablishment which would recruit a large number ofexcellent scientists with the intent of not only assuring thesuccess of this establishment, but also of creating such a‘sink’.

It was left to P P Ewald to raise the ethical responsibility ofscientists - before the atomic bomb had been unleashed -. ‘Ifa new world is to be planned, this can be a success only in sofar as the nations are agreed upon the ethical background onwhich political decisions are to be taken.’

131

The famous 5-year plans adopted by the Soviet union beforethe war had left their imprint in this country, and planningfor the post-war world was in the air, although it was notfully realised that in the Soviet Union the plans werefulfilled at enormous human cost. I and many of mycolleagues regarded planning and hope for a better world asan opportunity afforded by a successful prosecution of thewar against fascism. The conference, I thought, expressed amixture of pious hopes, hard thinking and sober demands tobe satisfied if science was to deliver a better post-war world.I was happy to see how much science was ready to beapplied to the proper working of government, to catering forhuman needs, to provide sufficient power for home andfactory, to the proper use of land, new materials, agriculture,location of industries, to transport, health and education, tothe proper use of natural resources and to the scientificplanning of technology and of science itself. In short thisAssociation’s conference, more than any of theAssociation’s other meetings, justified the ‘Advancement’ inits chosen name. I believe the influence of this conference onpost-war planning was incisive. It triggered the formation ofmany bodies planning for post-war science and highereducation.I came away from the conference fascinated by theinterrelation of science and public policy and I resolved todo in the future what I could to play a part in this field. Ifound some time to think about and work for the realisationof the ideas that had been stimulated by the meeting of theAssociation, although teaching in Southampton took uppractically all my available time. Shortly after the Londonconference I joined the Association of Scientific Workers(AScW). This association was a mixture of scientists of agreat range of expertise and of technicians. It was essentiallya trade union looking after the bread and butter interests ofits members. Scientists, who did not join it because theysuspected its left wing tendencies, preferred to call it a‘technicians trade union’. Nevertheless the scientists who

132

were keen to be members, whether academics or in industryor schools, felt that precisely because it was a trade unionthis association could participate in formulating social aimsof science. They thought that the AScW should havesufficient expertise to map out the contribution science couldmake to the post-war development of Britain. Naturally, agood many of the scientists were Marxists who felt thatscience was the natural vehicle for the betterment of theworld. Other members holding less fundamentalist views ofthe all-pervading and all-powerful thrust of science simplyfelt that neither the Royal Society nor the British Associationwere fully focused on the contemporary desire to use sciencefor future social benefit, and that the AScW could fill a gapleft by these bodies.For a short time I was the Secretary of the AScW’sSouthampton union branch and I found this office mostinstructive. For instance, one of my duties was to negotiatewith HM Inspector of Taxes and obtain tax allowances forour members, quaint considering that I was still officially anenemy alien, but nevertheless a trusted, if unpaid, tradeunion official.

In the winter of 1942/1943 the Head Office of the AScWinformed my branch that its executive was setting up acommittee to deal with science policy and I, being located atSouthampton, then the only higher education institution inthe South, as distinct from the South East or South West,accepted appointment to it as the Southern Region’srepresentative. P M S Blackett, Professor of Physics atManchester University, then was president of the AScW.The regional selection resulted in a somewhat haphazardcollection of scientists with Professor A H Bunting ofReading University as chairman of the committee. I foundmyself member of a group of highly motivated youngscientists charged with nothing less than to draw up ablueprint of post-war science. I very much enjoyed thescience policy work. We were all young, and some of us at

133

the beginning of brilliant academic careers. I remember inparticular John Kendrew, and R L M Synge and theresearchers from the Rothamsted biological laboratories. Wehad visits from Julian Huxley and from Maurice Goldsmith,the science writer who with Hermann Bondi had alreadyembarked on a campaign to make this country more scienceconscious and with whom I would years later collaborateunder the aegis of the International Science Foundation.Under the chairmanship of Bunting our committee, servicedby a brilliant secretary, Mrs Clark, a social scientist verymuch motivated by Bernal’s writing, we managed tocrystallise common points of view. Looking at the minutesof our meetings we decided that we had to do more thanbury them in a summary of reports to be submitted to theexecutive of the AScW, but decided to collect our views in abook. Thus our science policy committee transformed itselfinto an editorial board. The book was written chiefly by A HBunting and was eventually published by Penguin (Price: 1shilling) in 1946. It was titled ‘Science and the Nation’, andBlackett wrote the introduction:

“This book is the spare-time work of a group of mostlyyoung men and women, scientists, engineers and socialscientists, who are united in the desire to see the quickestpossible application of scientific and technical advances forthe benefit of mankind. They, or we, if I may count myselfas one of them, are frankly and proudly partisan in ourattitude to the main social tasks of today. Just as, during thewar, few people considered neutrality in the fight againstFascism as either gallant or wise, so we find little to admirein those of our scientific colleagues who, faced by the greatsocial problems of our time, are so frightfully scientific thatthey are unable to make up their minds on which side theystand…... There is no central body yet in existence which could beofficially entrusted with the task of making such a survey ashas been attempted here. This book will have justified its

134

production if it brings to a wider section of the public arealisation that such a central body is needed, and anunderstanding of some of the tasks which it shouldundertake.”

The book did not pretend to be a blueprint of the world tocome, but it did provide a forward view of what sciencecould make possible. It did not offer solutions, but showedthe necessity of solutions in many fields. It singled out someaspects of the British economy, of the key British industries,of Health and Food, and of Consumer research. It dealt withthe future of fundamental research in science, the planning,administration and finance of science. It dealt with thecultural value of science, science in general education, thetraining of scientists and the social implications of sciencepolicy. I think I made some useful contributions to thesections on fundamental research and the training ofscientists and their technical support. I also made thecommittee aware of parallel proposals in these fields madeby the Association of University Teachers (AUT).

In 1943 I had become the College’s representative on acommittee set up by the AUT to work on a plan for the post-war development of universities. My contribution, after myexperience in Southampton, was to accentuate the case forbetter research facilities. I pressed strongly for more time tobe given to academics in universities, especially the smallerones, to do research and for the training and for ampleprovision of highly skilled technicians in universitylaboratories. I remember quoting the continental example ofLeyden University with its skilled technicians and itsinfluence on the development of the gigantic Philipslaboratories in its neighbourhood, the pre-runner of whattoday one might call a science park, and pointed to thefamous Dutch university which had been both, a foundationof academic science and of industrial development inHolland.

135

Our report was written mainly by V E Cosslett of Oxfordand submitted and eventually approved by the AUT Councilnot long before the AScW book was published.

136

Chapter 11 - Cosmic Rays - A Peaceful

Study Of Nuclear Physics

When the war was coming to an end, cultural life outside theCollege recommenced. During the war I had been fortunateto listen to concerts whenever I went to London formeetings. Now the Hallé orchestra, conducted by (not ‘Sir’then) John Barbirolli began to give concerts inBournemouth. Its first performance included Schubert’sGreat C-major symphony, a work I heard then for the firsttime and I have loved ever since. But surely the firstconvincing sign that peace was approaching was aninvitation to support and subscribe to the Hampshire CountyCricket Club planning its first peacetime fixtures. Since Iknew almost nothing about cricket at the time I decided torestrict my extra-mural activities to the revival of theSouthampton Film Society. This was very successful, and Iwas elected chairman, but had to resign after less than a yearwhen I left Southampton.

The dropping of the nuclear bomb marked a new chapter inscience. The Smyth report, published in 1945, gave almostall the details of its history and of the huge industrial effortmade in creating the atomic bomb, just short of giving theactual blueprints. Physicists immediately were in hugedemand to explain what had happened here, and I foundmyself giving lectures, largely based on the report, toeducational and religious bodies. In every discussion afterthe lecture there were questions about the moral implicationsof this gigantic event and about the moral obligations ofscientists. At first I answered the latter questions by statingthat the population at large, as represented by the politicians,had taken the vital decision to make such a bomb, and thatthe scientists were mere technicians carrying out thedemocratically expressed will. Soon after, however, I began

137

to reflect on this problem more deeply. P P Ewald’s remarksabout the ethical obligations of scientists had been provokedby his experience in Germany and the Lysenko episode inRussian biology. I began to think that more than ever theexistence of the bomb was demanding an ethical attitude ofscientists who should do more than just comply with thepopular will. They would have to inform and warn humanityabout the implication of the momentous decisions they weretaking. I was glad to hear that soon after the dropping of thebomb the Pugwash conference began its deliberations. Whenlater I was in Manchester I went across to Liverpool whereProfessor Rotblat held a seminar on the moral issues raisedby the bomb. Nuclear physics, however, as distinct from thetechnology of the bomb, still had a great fascination for me.There were many interesting problems in this field, farremoved from nuclear fission technology.The field of cosmic rays in particular seemed interesting tome. This highly energetic radiation falling upon the earthconsisted of nuclear particles, many with higher energiesthan could ever be produced by particle accelerators.Moreover, the natural question of their origin of the cosmicrays opened up a new chapter in astrophysics, although thisseemingly simple question would soon turn out to have a farfrom easy answer.

The techniques to examine these rays were very much thoseused in nuclear physics, namely those employing Geigercounters and cloud chambers and their associatedelectronics, although all these techniques would have to be,and soon were, refined. I was quite aware that to get into theworld of nuclear physics for a single person in a very smallphysics department would not be easy at a time when in thisfield research was beginning to be carried out by ever largerteams in well-equipped laboratories. Yet I thought that anavenue to approach the field of cosmic rays was still open tome in my situation, which was to work alone in a smalllaboratory, because as yet it did not demand large teams of

138

researchers unlike those working on accelerators. Perhaps Icould commence an experiment on my own.Professor Taylor wrote to Professor Blackett in Manchesterasking whether there was a possibility for me to work in thisfield. Blackett replied that while he was still engaged ongovernment work, the cosmic ray research in Manchestercontinued to be directed by Dr L Jánossy, and that I shouldconsult him. I was invited by Jánossy, a refugee fromHungary, to spend some time of the summer vacation of1945 in Manchester. He received me in the laboratory and inhis house, where Mrs Jánossy would quite often serve supperafter our discussions long after their four children had beenput to bed. I spent a useful few weeks in the laboratorygaining experience working with Geiger counters andassociated electronic techniques. Towards the end of thevacation Jánossy suggested that I should try and construct acosmic ray ‘telescope’. This would consist of Geigercounters above one another with layers of lead betweenthem. An incident particle penetrating the counters and thelead between the counters would give a coincident responseof the counters. The fact that the particles penetrated the leadwas an indication of their energy, and the geometry of thecounters would define the direction of incidence of theseparticles. These penetrating particles are called muons, andby varying the thickness of the lead absorbers between themone could measure their energy spectrum.The penetrating particles in the cosmic radiation had beendiscovered not long before. J G Wilson had measured themuon spectrum working with Blackett when still at BirkbeckCollege shortly before the war. However furtherinvestigation of the spectrum seemed justified, since someresearchers claimed to have found irregularities in thespectrum which therefore needed confirmation. Returning toSouthampton at the beginning of term I commenced buildingthe telescope. There was a small research fund at theCollege, and I applied for a grant of the order of, I think,£100 for electronic equipment and for some lead which I

139

was going to cast into plates of suitable thickness to be usedin the proposed telescope.

I was interviewed by the chair of the Research Committee ofthe College, Professor Sheriff, a Scot who had accepted achair at Southampton after botanical field work in India. Itwas not a formal interview. I was invited to tea by Professorand Mrs Sheriff, and I remember a very pleasant afternoon intheir house. I do not know why I was received that kindly.Perhaps it was because I was the first to apply for a researchgrant after the war, perhaps I was regarded as an adoptedfellow Scot. After all I had come from Edinburgh and hadbeen accepted as a member of the Scottish colony ofexpatriates at the College. Shortly afterwards the Collegeawarded me the grant.

140

Chapter 12 - Blackett’s Laboratory

Already before the war P M S Blackett’s name was knownfor his work on cosmic rays, the radiation actuallydiscovered by the Austrian physicist V Hess. Not longbefore the war Blackett had moved from Birkbeck College,London, to follow W L Bragg in his chair in Manchester. Hismost famous discovery, jointly with G Occhialini, had beenthe detection in 1932 of the positron as one of a pair ofparticles, an electron-positron pair, recognised by showingtracks of opposite curvature in the cloud chamber which theyhad placed in a magnetic field. Since one of the particles wasrecognised as an electron, the other had to have a positivecharge. This confirmed the detection of a single positronobserved by C D Anderson in California only months earlier.For me, even today, the photograph of the event showing thetwo particle paths of opposite curvature beginning at theircusp is still one of the most exciting pictures of particlephysics I have ever seen. The particles which appearseemingly out of nothing picture the generation of theelectron and a positron in ‘pair production’, that is thecreation of a pair of oppositely charged particles by aninvisible photon. It is the experimental confirmation ofDirac’s theory of 1927 which demanded the existence ofsuch pairs. It is also a stage in the development of cascadesof particle showers, a radiation process as treated in thetheory of Bhabha and Heitler in 1937 and independently byCarlson and Oppenheimer in the same year. Lovell andWilson, then working in Manchester, published a picture ofsuch a shower in 1938, showing a spectacular number oftracks of particles in Blackett’s cloud chamber. On thecontinent such a chamber is still referred to quite often as a‘Wilson’ chamber after its inventor C T R Wilson who hadbeen a collaborator of Rutherford’s in Cambridge.

141

Blackett and Occhialini had used a technique, first employedby Bruno Rossi and now firmly established, of using acoincidence arrangement of particle detectors to trigger theircloud chamber. The particle detectors had been Geiger -Müller counters, designed by these two collaborators inRutherford’s laboratory in Manchester, but now usuallyreferred to as Geiger counters. In ‘coincidence’ they wouldgive rise to a signal if they were struck simultaneously -within the response time of the counters - by particlestravelling through them, for example by the same particlestravelling through counters arranged vertically. Converselyan ‘anti-coincidence’ arrangement would signal a particlethat had traversed a Geiger counter, but not another so thatparticles not travelling in a path defined by the counterscould be excluded. Occhialini had put Geiger counters ontop and below the cloud chamber which itself was placedbetween the poles of a magnet. Incident particles passingthrough the Geiger counters both above and below thechamber then provided the coincidence signal needed by thechamber to trigger its expansion mechanism and expose theparticle tracks. The magnet would cause the positive andnegative particle’s path to show opposite curvatures.

This was the state of cosmic ray detection technique bycounters and their associated electronics when I arrived inManchester. Jánossy had been quite impressed when hecame to visit me in Southampton early in 1946 and saw thatI had been able to start measurements. He recommended mywork to Blackett who had by then returned to theManchester laboratory and was assembling collaborators,most of them young physicists who had been away on warwork and were eager to begin or recommence research.Blackett offered me a research assistantship allotted to himand funded by the then DSIR, the forerunner of today’sResearch Councils. I was so intent on using this chance ofworking in Blackett’s laboratory that I accepted the post,although it meant a loss of status and of salary after having

142

held a full lectureship, albeit temporary as were all war timeappointments. Yet I did not think any sacrifice too great if Icould work in Blackett’s world-renowned laboratory onthese conditions. Southampton allowed me to take myapparatus to Manchester, and when I had arrived in theautumn of 1946 a research student, K Westerman, wasallocated to me who would continue the measurements withmy telescope while I was engaged on a new research project.

Blackett and Jánossy had agreed that the department shouldengage on air shower research. Cosmic ray air showers, ‘lesgrandes gerbes’, or ‘Extensive Air Showers’ (EAS), werediscovered in 1938 by Pierre Auger and his team thatincluded Ehrenfest, Daudin, Maze and Fréon. These showersare still today, more than 80 years after their discovery, amost intriguing and exciting field of study. Auger had foundthat these showers could spread over a wide area. Theshowers consisted largely of cascades of electrons andphotons, and the cascades developed in agreement withBhabha and Heitler’s theory. Also the showers containedmuons and ‘nuclear-active’ particles, as they were firstreferred to in the Russian literature. They were so calledbecause, unlike muons, they had a high probability ofinteracting with other nuclei. They are presently referred toas ‘hadrons’. The large number of particles in a showerarises from the arrival of very energetic particles at the top ofthe atmosphere. Just how a shower developed in theatmosphere was only partly understood when I arrived inManchester in the autumn of 1946. It was the discovery byCecil Powell of the pion which was the key to theunderstanding.

The existence of the pion, the particle necessary tounderstand and describe the strong nuclear force, had beenproposed by the Japanese physicist H Yukawa eleven yearsearlier in 1935 to explain the interaction of nucleons. It wasrealised that the muon first seen in the cosmic radiation

143

could not be the this particle. It did not interact strongly withmatter, but penetrated absorbers fairly easily. Hence it didnot lose much of its energy in nuclear collisions in leadcontrary to the expected behaviour of the Yukawa particle.

A breakthrough in understanding the shower developmentwas made by C F Powell and his group in Bristol when theydiscovered the strongly interacting pion in photographicemulsions they had placed at mountain altitude. The paperby Lattes, Muirhead, Occhialini and Powell describing itsdiscovery was published in 1947. The Bristol group showedalso that pions would decay into muons. Yukawa hadcalculated that the decay time of the pion should be of theorder of nanoseconds. The decay time is about onehundredth of that of the muon so that Geiger counters withtheir resolution time of microseconds would miss the pionbut not the muon. The discovery of the pion completed thepicture of the development of air showers. It was found thatthere are three pions, a positive, a negative and a neutral one,and the neutral pions would decay into photons, Thesediscoveries provided an explanation of the various stepsbetween the incidence of a high energy nucleon, or of anoccasional nucleus, at the top of the atmosphere and of thesubsequent shower development detailed as follows:An energetic nucleon, or occasionally a heavier nucleus,incident at the top of the earth’s atmosphere collides andinteracts with an air nucleus. The interaction will producepions. The charged pions decay into muons, while theneutral pions produce photons which give rise to electron-photon cascades. The incident particle loses only part of itsenergy in the first collision and will collide again and losemore of its energy in subsequent collisions. On average itwill interact about eight times on its way down theatmosphere. Each of such collisions will give rise tocascades and some hadrons until the nucleonic energy is nolonger sufficient to cause more interactions. The showerregistered at sea level will be composed of many overlapping

144

cascades accompanied by muons. Some hadrons, will also bepresent. The electron-photon cascades, called the ‘soft’component, the weakly interacting penetrating muons andthe surviving hadrons all arrive at sea level withinnanoseconds of each other, the hadrons being nearest to theshower axis, constituting the generating column of theshowers. Hence the earth’s atmosphere, in which the showerdevelopment takes place, acts as a detector of the incidenthigh-energy particles whose signatures are the observedshowers. The number of particles arriving at the earth’ssurface and the energy carried by them is a measure of theenergy of the incident particle. Historically one of the firstexperiments was to arrive at a rough estimate of the energyof the incident particle, derived from the number of particlesmeasured at sea level, and measure their frequency, their so-called number spectrum.

The discovery by Powell’s team in Bristol was of specialinterest to me because of the method used in identifying thenew particle, He had used, and later developed, thetechnique invented by Marietta Blau and J Wambacher at thetime when I worked in the Radium Institute in Vienna whohad shown that the tracks of nuclear particles could be madevisible in photographic emulsions. I had attended theceremony when the two ladies were awarded prizes by theVienna Akademie der Wissenschaften. Powell had at firstused this technique for the measurement of nuclear reactionsby exposing photographic emulsions at the Liverpoolaccelerator, before he and his team had placed photographicemulsions at high altitude and exposed them to cosmic rays.

The emulsion technique was further developed by the Bristolteam in collaboration with the photographic firm Ilford.Rather than using photographic plates they assembled layerupon layer of photographic emulsions making up a block ofemulsion. By appropriately analysing sections of theemulsion they could follow the path of particles and, if

145

created by their interactions, of secondary particles oversome distance. Also from the ionisation caused by theparticles they would arrive at an estimate of the particles’energies. This emulsion work in Bristol which provided anestimate of the energy of the incident particles and of theirinteraction products was itself an important experimentaladvance making this technique an important new tool inexamining cosmic ray events. A visitor to Powell’slaboratory in Bristol would be enormously impressed seeingthe large team of young researchers, expert in scanningemulsions, and the array of powerful microscopes.Numerous exciting cosmic ray discoveries were made by theBristol group where Peter Fowler and Don Perkins laterbecame two of Powell’s many outstanding collaborators.Emulsions have been used since by Japanese and by Russiangroups and were used in conjunction with fast electronicdetectors, embedded in lead absorbers, at high altitudes by aJapanese-Bolivian-American group in Bolivia at an altitudeof about 5200m .The importance of Powell’s discoveries was recognised bythe award of the Nobel prize to him in 1950, only three yearsafter the publication of his discovery of the pion.

I had met Powell briefly at a cosmic ray symposium inBristol soon after coming to Manchester. I found him awarm hearted and sympathetic person without the slightestattempt to stand on his dignity to which he was well entitled,but an attentive listener to a person like me who was verymuch his junior. He was very interested to hear that I hadworked in the same laboratory in Vienna as had MariettaBlau and from that moment never gave up interest in mywork. I met him again briefly at the cosmic ray conference inBagnères de Bigorre in 1951 when I told him about my plansto examine the hadrons in air showers. Later, when I hadbeen awarded a grant for my hadron research I informed himabout the design of my apparatus and again received muchencouragement from him.

146

I stayed in touch with Powell from then on, and he remainedinterested in my work. The last time I saw him was inBristol, when I was acting as a PhD examiner in hisdepartment. As ever he was most kind to me and, whenseeing Sir Charles Franks, introduced me as his ‘friend’.Franks seemed somewhat surprised at my connection withPowell, because he had only heard of me in connection withmy solid state work.Powell’s untimely death in 1969 was a great loss for mepersonally and professionally.

147

Chapter 13 - Extensive Air Showers -

Detecting the Highest Energies

The discovery of the pion, the missing link in theunderstanding of cosmic ray shower development, however,did not stop work on cosmic ray muons even if they wereparticles secondary to the pions and much less stronglyinteracting. True, muons with their power of penetration, thatis with their inability to interact strongly, were not asimportant as were the pions for understanding the nature oftheir interactions and explaining the shower development.On the other hand because of their weak interaction andtherefore larger probability of survival they carry memoriesof some of the shower ‘history’, which makes them suitablefor the recognition of many cosmic ray parameters.

The showers contain a key to three puzzles of enormousinterest for cosmologists and high-energy particle physicistsalike. What is the nature of the incident particles and wheredo they originate? What is the cosmic process acceleratingthese particles and making them so energetic? Thirdly,physicists want to understand the laws of the interactionsthat take place at these very large energies, larger than thosethat can ever be reached by even the most powerfulaccelerators.Many of the answers are provided by the showerdevelopment in the atmosphere, effectively the showerdetector. By placing particle detectors near the earth’ssurface, preferably at altitudes where the showers reach theirfull development before being gradually attenuated, many ofthese questions can be answered in part. This is technicallyfar easier than observations in space, although some cosmicray shower experiments have been designed for inclusion inspace programs.

148

It is easy to understand how these questions thrown up bythe phenomenon of cosmic rays and especially by thediscovery of the extensive air showers began to fascinatemany physicists. I myself, who at first had been attracted tocosmic ray research only by considerations of feasibility ofnuclear research for an individual in my position, soonbecame completely engrossed in cosmic ray research and Ibecame fascinated by its astrophysical implications.

Blackett had just asked Leslie Hodson, then a youngpostgraduate, to build a shower detector in the (emptied)case of a blockbuster bomb to be carried in the bomb bay ofa Mosquito bomber at the height of about 10 km. Such andother obsolete war hardware was then easily available andBlackett thought that I should build a shower detector arrayand place it in a submarine which was to be taken down togreat depths. However this idea was abandoned whencalculations showed that air showers could be measured byplacing detectors spread out at ground level over greatdistances. This would be preferable to a small arraycompressed into a submarine which in any case could notregister the ‘soft’, the electron-photon, component ofshowers which is easily absorbed by the water. But neitherLeslie Hodson nor I would abandon the idea thatsimultaneous measurements of a shower at several levels,e.g. at mountain heights as well as at sea level and far belowit might produce interesting data on the shower development.Experiments of this kind are carried out in Italy at the GranSasso laboratories where a shower array at high altitude isrelated to shower data obtained about 2500m below in thelaboratory in a tunnel excavated below the mountain.Another experiment in Hawaii hoping to relay data obtainedat two levels, on a mountain cliff and deep below on the seabed was begun, but shortly after abandoned. Today, a newtype of detector, the ‘fly’s eye’, which records showerparameters by training its detectors simultaneously on

149

different stages of shower development in the atmosphereseems to be a better approach.

After discussions it was decided that I should work with apostgraduate, D Broadbent, to set up an air shower detectingarray within the University precinct. The showers weredetected by counters placed in groups over as large an areaas was possible, and their simultaneous responses weresampled by a coincidence arrangement. Such recordingswould yield the density distribution and its spectrum, that isthe particle density as function of their frequency. From thiswe would then derive an estimate of the size of the showersand eventually the energies of the particles originating theshower. Also a rough estimate can be made of the directionof incidence of the primary particle by timing the showerarrival. Measuring the time of arrival of the showers andhence that of the incident particle might show a changedepending on which part of the sky our apparatus wouldface. The sidereal time, that is the time of a completerevolution of the earth until it faces again the same locationin the sky is slightly different from solar time, the timeregistered by our ordinary clocks and watches, owing to themovement of the sun. To record in sidereal time ourchronometer had to be adjusted. A few years later in Leedswhen again I wanted my clock to be adjusted to sidereal timeand explained to our local jeweller what was the reason forthe adjustment, he and his staff got so excited by theirchance to take part in an experiment in astrophysics that theyinsisted they would not charge for this service.

Because of the availability at little cost of discarded warmaterial, ‘surplus stocks’, notably valves and otherelectronics, we could design our experiment on an ambitiousscale. Without this windfall the costs of our designexperiment would have been prohibitive. We could availourselves, too, of many new electronic techniques developedduring the war that were beginning to be declassified. In fact

150

I had the strong suspicion that some items of the electroniccircuitry were declassified only after we had incorporatedthem in our design. I remember seeing a manual, issued by agovernment department, containing such designs in ourlibrary and telephoning that department to obtain anothercopy, only to be told that this publication was as yet notdeclassified!

Detection arrays larger than ours, soon to be built by othergroups, could no longer be constructed on the cheap. Untilabout 1950 one could go to war surplus stores and buy manyitems which traders had picked up at Ministry of Supplyauctions. Yet much of this material soon becameobsolescent. Academic research, as always, requiresapparatus at the very forefront of technology, so much sothat physicists have to design it themselves. In the case ofelectronics this meant faster and more integrated circuitrythan used in the war. Hence soon air shower research wouldbecome ever more expensive, although still cheaper andrequiring less personnel than accelerator work.

The read-out of the shower detectors presented a newchallenge. We wanted to see and analyse the response ofeach individual Geiger counter in order to know where theshower particles had struck. We decided therefore to processthe counter responses individually, send the signals throughcables to a central recording unit and display their arrival ona panel. A counter response would then trigger a light whichwe could photograph with a camera triggered by acoincidence signal. The photograph showing a pattern of lit-up lamps would correspond to the groups of counters struckby shower particles. In our case this recording methodrequired about 500 valves with their circuitry and theconstruction of the central unit recording the time and date.We thought at the time that this recording technique wasrather admirable. However, it seems primitive compared tothe sophisticated techniques applied today. The first

151

improvement was made possible by faster counters, forinstance scintillators recorded by photomultipliers, and fastersignal transmission which also allowed the timing ofresponses. Next the recording unit would be modified sosignals would be displayed on screens and also analysed bycomputers when these became available. Later still signalswould be processed electronically near the detectors and feddirectly into a central computer unit. They could then beanalysed using programmes specially designed for theindividual experiment.In the meantime detector techniques used in accelerators hadmade enormous progress from which cosmic ray and astro-physicists could profit also. Groups at CERN obtainedthousands of photographs of particle tracks in their detectorswhich accumulated and had to be analysed. I remember acircular being sent in the 1960's to physics departmentsasking them to help in this analysis. This approach was notpopular with the departments. It could mean that youngresearchers might write a PhD thesis based simply on theirstaring into a track analyser for about two years without everseeing the original experiment, let alone helping to design it.Fortunately soon after, computer techniques allowed particletracks and other information from the detectors to bedigitised and fed direct into a central computer. Nowadayslarge teams of physicists, including graduate students, in theaccelerator laboratory spend their time in understanding andimproving computer programs and finally in analysing andinterpreting data. They benefit from the atmosphere wherehard work is interspersed with lively discussions. The workmay include designing adjustments to the experimental set-up, training in new techniques, be they in computing or inexperimentation. All this is useful for the training of youngscientists who will continue in research on fundamentalproblems and for others who will eventually make their wayin industry, in research and development or inadministration. The disadvantage of large teams is thatsometimes the contributions of individuals are not clearly

152

recognised and some researchers are not receiving their duecredit. But this of course also happens in smaller groups.

In our experiment the counters were spread in groups over

an area of (50m)2

which could record showers up to a size

corresponding to an incident particle energy of 1015

eV = 1GeV.One of our results was that such showers arrive at a rate of

70 per year per m2. The energy was larger than the energies

achieved by particle accelerators being constructed at thetime, but larger shower arrays constructed since then havemade possible the detection of showers initiated by particles

of very much higher energy, say of the order of 1020

eV andhigher.In Manchester we also recorded the incident muons inaddition to the soft electron-photon component andexamined them in relation to the shower structure. This wasdone by putting half of the counters under lead shieldingbelow the unshielded counters, a great expense because leadhad to be purchased at the market price.Ours was at that time one of the largest air shower sets inoperation, but larger sets were already being constructedworld wide. Design and construction of our ambitiousexperiment took two years, because of the mass ofconstruction work. Manchester’s Dental School generouslyallowed us to use the flat roof of their new building, but theyrefused to give us access through their clinical departments,understandable, because our clothing and our apparatus wereanything but sterile. We had to construct a special liftingarrangement outside the building and I was nearly killedwhen one of the lead blocks we were lifting fell out of itscradle and landed within a foot or so from where I wasstanding. Power supplies, recording and test equipment wereat ground level in a hut in the courtyard of the physicsdepartment. We commenced by running a pilot experimentcontaining only two shielded and two unshielded trays at

153

ground level in front of the hut and surrounded the trays withwire fences. They looked a bit like graves, and some kindsoul once laid a bunch of flowers on them.

There was a good exchange of information world widebetween the various groups engaged on shower work, indiscussion at conferences, by letter and sometimes by ‘phonecalls. The Mexico conference (1955) was the first to give agood deal of time to Extensive Air Showers, and shortlyafterwards the Oxford conference in 1956 was called to dealexclusively with this topic. Comparisons of results of thevarious group was not always straightforward, because thedesigns of the various experiments were never completelyidentical. On the other hand such differences in design couldhighlight shower parameters that were more suitable formeasurement by one array, rather than another.The arrival of new and faster detectors other than Geigercounters marked a new phase in air shower work. Manyimportant shower parameters could not be measured byGeiger counters. Not only could Geiger counters not resolveevents faster than microseconds, but they could only indicatethe passage of a particle through them, giving a ‘yes’ or ‘no’response. They could not measure energy. Therefore theycould not tell how much energy was still contained in thehadrons near the axis, the generating column, the ‘core’ ofthe shower, a problem in which I was particularly interested.While still in Manchester I began thinking about how tomeasure the particles’ energies, a vital parameter requiredfor estimating the energy of the shower-initiating particle,even ‘though the techniques for such measurements were asyet not available. Also many other questions connected withthe development of showers would remain unresolved for along time. As late as 1981 one of the outstanding problems,concerning the character of the nuclear interaction of thecosmic ray particles at energies higher than those of particlesaccelerated by machines, was the subject of a paper Isubmitted, with Michael (A M) Hillas, at the Paris

154

conference, one year after my retirement. By then thedevelopment of showers could be treated reasonably wellmathematically with computer simulations where MichaelHillas had done some outstanding pioneer work. To this daythere is no satisfactory explanation of the origin of cosmicrays, nor a recognisable upper limit to the energy of thecosmic ray particles that give rise to the largest showers.

Nevertheless even with the, now thought, slow detectors wehad in Manchester we were able to obtain some usefulresults. When the data came in I realised that to arrive attheir interpretation from the Geiger counters required alengthy and extremely difficult analysis which has been andstill is a necessity in almost all shower experiments, evenwith the much more advanced equipment now available. Wenevertheless could publish results three years after we hadbegun the experiment. In this we had help from Jánossy whowith his brilliant insight could interpret, as he had in hiswork with Rochester, data that were often equivocal.We could confirm that the energy of the showers werecorded demanded an incident particle of energy of about

1015

eV, but the next question, namely how far the sizespectrum would continue up the energy range we could notanswer. It seemed clear that the ‘end’ of the spectrum was along way off, very much higher than the energy range wewere recording. Another negative result obtained with oursidereal clock measuring the arrival times of the shower wasthat we found no preferred direction of incidence, no‘anisotropy’ of the showers. Nor would I see it when Icarried out a timing experiment later in Leeds. I thought thatperhaps the arrival direction of the shower particles wouldshow an anisotropy if one looked at very much higherenergies, but with our apparatus we could not tell.We could show that the incident showers followed a simplepower spectrum. We showed also that the shower densitywould vary quite noticeably over distances even as small asmetres, confirming the picture of a shower with a central

155

(generating) column from which the shower particles wouldtail off. Previous to this experiment, such lateral distributioncould only be inferred indirectly from a so-calleddecoherence curve measured by the responses of detectorswith increasing separation.

Soon after Pamela Rothwell at Imperial College builtanother shower array similar in extent to ours and used it torecord showers looking for indications of a variation withsidereal time. No such evidence, however, was found.

Our difficulties in interpreting our recorded data did notdiffer much from those of other workers in the field. I thenthought that a breakthrough in interpretation of the detectorresponses could be achieved if one did not have first toderive the shower structure by complicated analysis, but ifone had a way of detecting the position of the shower coreexperimentally. One could then relate to the detectedposition of the core all the other measurements, that is ofdensity, energy and time delays. Such a ‘core detector’would obviate any theoretical assumption about the showerstructure, but measure directly this unknown showerproperty which one hoped to elucidate. I began to design ashower array containing a shower core detector, but I had towait some time, until after I had left Manchester, to build it.Computers, of course, would have vastly eased a satisfactoryanalysis, but these were as yet not widely available. Theprototype of a modern computer had just been demonstratedto us in the Electronics Department of ManchesterUniversity by Professor F Williams, but it would take twodecades before computers were used in standard showeranalysis.

New techniques and detectors, faster by a factor of 100 werejust making their appearance. They were scintillationcounters measuring the tiny sparks caused by particles in thescintillation material and �erenkov counters. The latter were

156

named after the Russian physicist who had discovered thatparticles with relativistic velocities travelling in a refractivemedium will emit radiation which could then be measured,as could the scintillations, by photomultipliers.Combinations of such counters and other devices would laterbe useful in estimating particle energies and the relativearrival times of the shower particles. In 1953 at the CosmicRay Conference at Bagnères de Bigorre at the foot of the Picdu Midi I met Bruno Rossi who told me that his group atMIT had succeeded in measurements of the relative arrivaltimes of shower particles, with scintillators that were fasterby about at least two orders of magnitude compared withGeiger counters and that his measurements showed theshower front had a ‘thickness’ of a few metres correspondingto nanoseconds.At the high altitude laboratory on Pic du Midi also we couldsee John Jelley and W (Bill) Galbraith trying out their newlydesigned �erenkov counters, establishing the new and fastdirect detection method of cosmic rays. Interestingly,because this illustrates the interrelation of cosmic ray andhigh-energy topics, Jelley would publish the standard bookon �erenkov counters and after that would examineastrophysical problems, whereas Galbraith would turn toparticle physics. Jelley would work at ARE Harwell andGalbraith at the new (then called) Rutherford laboratory,situated on the other side of the fence separating it (but witha hole in the fence to guarantee access to the Rutherfordlaboratory’s dining area) from ARE Harwell.I returned from the Bagnères de Bigorre conferenceoptimistic that the new techniques now available could helpme in my plans for a new shower experiment in the nearfuture.

157

Chapter 14 - Manchester Detects New

Sub-Nuclear Particles

I never regretted my decision to go to Manchester in spite ofmy loss of status. Blackett’s laboratory was full of physicistskeen to return to research after their war work and of younggraduates, all enthused by new ideas and willing to workhard. Visitors arrived from all over the world, some for shortvisits to tell us about their results, others to work for sometime in the famous laboratory where Blackett had followedW L Bragg, (the then Sir Ernest) Rutherford’s successor.There was money for new experiments and ampleequipment. Postgraduates and staff could obtain grants toattend conferences and it was only a matter of time beforenew and significant discoveries would ensue.Rutherford had left Manchester in 1919, but his faithfullaboratory assistant, Mr Kay, had remained until 1945 andloyally guarded everything that Rutherford had left behind.This unfortunately included a large amount of radioactivematerial, some of it in solution. I was busy one day testingmy Geiger counters, but found that all of them were racing ata frightening rate. I re-opened, re-filled and resealed them,but their behaviour did not change. It was only when out ofcuriosity I opened the drawer of the bench I was working onthat I found in it some radioactive material! Blackettimmediately organised a blitz-like operation, thoroughlycleaning the whole building and particularly the roomswhere Rutherford himself had worked.Blackett’s cloud chamber and magnet occupied a centralposition in the main cosmic ray laboratory in the physicsdepartment. I saw the chamber again recently on a visit toManchester and was struck by its small dimensions. It wascylindrical in shape with a diameter of not more than 30 cm.For cosmic ray experiments the chamber was put on its sideso that the paths of particles up to the length of this diameter

158

could be followed. Nevertheless one cannot help beingamazed at this tiny chamber in which so many importantdiscoveries were made. It seemed almost natural that thenext generation of cloud chambers constructed atManchester would have a surface of about four times that ofthe 30 cm chamber, to visualize long particle tracks. Thusmeasurements could be made much more accurately and thetraces of secondary particles produced in interactions in thechambers were easier to analyse than in smaller chambers.Three of these larger cloud chambers were constructed, oneto be operated by a group led by K Sitte. Two others alsowere put on their sides, one above the other, with two largemagnets, so that the curvature of charged particles’ paths dueto the magnetic fields could be observed over distances ofthe order of metres. This group was led by J G Wilson whohad obtained a grant of the then considered large sum of£5000 to build this arrangement. The tower housing the twolarge cloud chambers with magnets to match was prominentas soon as one entered the courtyard containing the oldSchuster Laboratory and the new annex of the physicsdepartment. This experiment would enable the team to seethe particle paths and measure the ratio of incident positiveto negative muons. The knowledge of this ratio seemed quiteimportant at the time and similar experiments using morethan one chamber were also carried out by Leprince-Ringuet’s group at the Pic du Midi. Soon other detectors likethe ‘bubble’ chambers, spark chambers and other newtechniques would be developed which would graduallyreplace cloud chambers.It is worth noting that Sir George Schuster, who wasRutherford’s predecessor in Manchester had become famousnot only for his research, but by his selfless insistence thatthe university should offer a chair to Rutherford, who at thattime was working in Canada. He offered to resign to create avacancy at Manchester which could then be filled byRutherford’s appointment.

159

Wilson would eventually assume the role of ‘executiveofficer’, in Navy parlance, responsible to Blackett foroverseeing most of the cosmic ray work, especially the cloudchambers in Manchester and a cloud chamber group at theJungfraujoch in Switzerland. Nevertheless in spite of thisdelegation to Wilson Blackett never lost direct contact withthe people in his laboratory and often came round and talkedto us.Cosmic ray particles are more plentiful at high altitudes thanat sea level where many have been lost by absorption.Therefore observations of their nature are facilitated whencarried out at high altitude. The Jungfraujoch was only oneof the high-altitude locations where cosmic ray detectorswere placed. There was until recently a Bolivian-US-Japanese collaboration working in Bolivia at Chacaltaya (at5200m). The French work at the Pic du Midi in the FrenchPyrenees (2860m) was discontinued in the mid-1950's. Manyother ingenious high altitude experiments were carried out.The Bristol group had placed emulsions in the loading bay ofa Comet aircraft, while on proving flights, and MarcelSchein and later B Peters in the US used balloons to examineprimary incident particles, as again did the Bristol group andothers. Later N L Grigorov was able to place detectors in aRussian rocket, the Soviet engineers being keen to test theirrockets with a payload of several tons for which Grigorov’slead absorbers were ideally suited. Other high altitudeexperiments are still being conducted now.The Jungfraujoch experiments did not make much progress.Anthony Newth who was leading the group sadly died.Other researchers who had spent time at high altitude alsohad health problems. Keith Barker collapsed and died afterhis return from high altitude. His death came as a greatshock to many of us. He was a young and promisingresearcher, one of the class that included Arnold Wolfendale,both of whom I had taught in the final year laboratory atManchester. One of the lessons we learnt from theJungfraujoch experiment was how important it was at high

160

altitudes to have a contented team. Barker may have had aheart problem which was aggravated by high altitude work.The Italian group working at Mt Cervinia recognised thedangers inherent in high-altitude work and rightly introducedstrict requirements for their teams to spend not more thanthree weeks at a time at high altitude and to return for a restperiod to a house they had rented in the valley below atCervinia. The Jungfraujoch teams were further handicappedby the absence of auxiliary staff looking after the physicalcomforts of the scientific team who had to spend valuableresearch time on household chores. Here the French hadmade history by having a resident chef at the Pic du Midi.They had a canteen and properly equipped study-bedrooms.There was none of this organisation at the Jungfraujochwhich resulted in friction between team members, and theirmorale was low. Blackett tried to set an example by visitingthe team for a short time and showing them how much workcould be done in two days if they could put their minds to it.Finally the team gave up and the cloud chamber with itsassociated equipment was dismantled.K Sitte’s group, experimenting with a new design of a largecloud chamber made little progress due to personal as wellas technical difficulties. The former arose from Blackett’sdecision to accept, perhaps too soon after the war, a Germanpostgraduate and make him join this group. It led to apersonality clash between him and Sitte. The difficultpartnership ended when the postgraduate rudely objected tothe way he was spoken to by Sitte, suggesting that Sittemight speak to his, Sitte’s, wife in this tone, but not to him.Perhaps some blame should be attached to Sitte as well. Hehad some brilliant ideas, and in discussion in seminars andinternational conferences he would come up with very usefulcomments from which I personally had occasions to profit.On the other hand he was a bit of a loner, rather than a teamleader.

161

H J J Braddick, supervising only few research studentsbecame, again in naval parlance, the captain’s engineerofficer. He was responsible for supervising the teachinglaboratories and advised on experimental techniques onwhich he had published a useful book. He would beconsulted and listened to by Blackett when designs of newapparatus were discussed. I personally had good relationswith him, but had sharp disagreements when he objected tomy design of power supplies for our counters.Bernard Lovell had come back from his war work on Radar,but he did not return to cosmic ray work, although for a shorttime he thought his experience in Radar could help with thedetection of cosmic rays. He had the idea of using war timeequipment, Radar transmitters and receivers, for scanningthe sky. Much of the military Radar equipment was nowsurplus, and he thought he could initiate this research at littlecost. He soon found out that the signals received by hisaerial turned out to be caused by at first unidentified sourcesin the MHz region. This was the beginning of radioastronomy, it was the beginning also of Big Science inManchester. Although it was at first easy and inexpensive toobtain surplus Radar equipment the radio astronomy costswould soon escalate. I remember the strong reaction of theDSIR that funded the experiment, when soon after obtaininghis equipment Lovell asked for a grant of £2000, a large sumin those days of university research, towards the constructionof not research equipment but a road (!) to his site.

George Rochester I remember as a man of great kindness.His quite unjustified modesty almost hid his greatexperimental skills. Working with the theoretically giftedJánossy he was an ideal co-worker in this brilliant team.Their last joint experiment, before Blackett returned, was totrigger the cloud chamber by a complicated coincidencearrangement of Geiger counters embedded in layers of lead.The thickness of lead ensured that they could measure thepenetrating muon showers and particles produced after

162

cosmic rays had interacted in the lead absorber above thechamber. This arrangement, the at the time famous ‘P-set’,had given them new results about particle production at highenergies. However, their selection of events was so stringentthat the chamber was triggered and photographs wereobtained only at a very slow rate. Interesting cloud chamberpictures leading to theories about possible plural or multipleproduction of secondary particles - hotly argued about at thetime, but now largely forgotten - resulted from theseexperiments.

On his return Blackett made it clear that he was not happywith the direction of the ‘P- set’ investigations. He did notlike experiments which could be justified only by veryabstract arguments and then, he said, would not provideclear-cut results. He and Jánossy had long arguments aboutJánossy’s selection system triggering the cloud chamber.Finally Blackett insisted that Jánossy’s arrangement with itsslow rate of photographing tracks was a ‘waste of capitalequipment’. He asked Rochester and C C Butler, who hadjust been appointed assistant lecturer, to run the chamberwith an eased selection, which would trigger the chamber ata higher rate. The chamber would still respond to particlessecondary to interactions in the lead above the chamber, butnot specifically record events such as Jánossy was lookingfor. It was after this change of selection that the ‘V’particles, as they were at first called because of the geometryof their tracks, were discovered. Soon they were given theadjective ‘strange’, and this discovery would open up high-energy research of sub-nuclear physics.It is always difficult to decide who was the personresponsible for such an outstanding discovery. It wasRochester and Butler who analysed the photographs, but itwas Blackett who had decided that the cloud chamber triggershould be changed. Blackett held back publication when thefirst ‘new’ particle was discovered, insisting that thediscovery needed confirmation. Weeks later I was sitting

163

next to Butler at lunch when Blackett sitting opposite toldhim that he was now convinced the new discovery wasestablished. Butler had just analysed and shown Blackett anew photograph of an event similar to the first discovered byRochester and Butler.

The reaction in the laboratory to this discovery, soon afterpublished in ‘Nature’, was one of quiet confidence ratherthan an excessive champagne celebration. One might almostsay that the reaction in other laboratories the world over wasmore dramatic than in Manchester where the atmospherecould be described as quietly confident. It inspired, however,Bernard Hyams to go to CERN where he would take aleading role in high-energy particles research. Severalresearch groups took up the chase of these new particlesusing set-ups like Blackett’s and found similar events. Onthe Pic-du-Midi Leprince-Ringuet’s group, led by BGregory, had made measurements with two cloud chambersplaced above one another and confirmed the Manchesterresults. These justified the choice of Bagnères de Bigorre, atthe foot of the Pic du Midi, as a venue of a conference in1953. It brought together reports from all over the world onthe new ‘strange’ particles recorded since the publication ofthe Manchester discovery. At Bagnères the latestobservations of the new particles were discussed andcompared among great excitement, and fervent discussionswould continue over mealtimes and late at night. Acompletely new field, that of sub-nuclear high-energyphysics had opened.

I was very happy to work at Manchester where outside theuniversity, too, I made contact with many interesting people.Unfortunately this could not be said about my relations withWilson. It would take longer than 20 years before I noticedthat Wilson would begin to appreciate me and my work. Ican only guess what had led to Wilson’s attitude towards me,but then he was quite often prejudiced. He could not get on

164

with Jánossy, and why later he objected to the name of ECStoner being given to the new physics building in Leeds Inever understood. I have the feeling that he did not liketheoretical approaches to physics problems, nor the peoplewho in his view ‘speculated’. To some extent I couldunderstand his feelings towards me, because I wassometimes carried away by ideas without first applying thecritical analysis he had set himself as a standard. I admit thatit took me a long time to overcome this habit. On the otherhand he was criticised about his attitude to me, because hedid not ’get the best out of people’, as Philip (later Professor)Marsden put it.

Blackett insisted that all research fellows and otherpostgraduates should do some teaching in the laboratory, andI enjoyed teaching in the final year laboratory, but most ofmy time was taken up with research, a situation unlike thatin Southampton where I feared that even after the warteaching would have been my major preoccupation.Cosmic ray research in Manchester was right up to date andlarge enough to pursue several lines of cosmic ray and otherresearch simultaneously. To use cosmic rays to investigatehigh-energy interactions was one of them, but although theManchester discovery had opened up the field of the strangeparticles, quicker advances in this field would be made soonafter by accelerator work. But, in the energy region beyondthat of the accelerators, cosmic ray work by the Bristol groupand later by Russian and Japanese groups at high altitudeusing photographic emulsions as well as fast counters wouldcontinue apace.

Another group in Manchester worked at the low energy endof the cosmic ray spectrum, far below the shower energies.Here research was carried on examining incoming particles

of energy 109- 10

10eV, which constitute not more than a few

percent of the total cosmic radiation and originate mostly inthe sun. They are affected by the conditions of the

165

geomagnetic field and are indicators of the variable activityof the sun and its flares and of the electromagneticconditions of the solar system in general. These experimentsin the low-energy region of cosmic rays, including work onvariations with solar time, were carried out by H Elliot andD W Dolbear, using Geiger counters, and by P Adamsonusing a neutron monitor, because neutrons arising from thesolar radiation were sufficiently abundant to be measuredwith monitors consisting essentially of boron fluoride‘proportional’ counters in a graphite ‘pile’.

Paul Adamson who had designed and constructed theneutron experiment was a very gifted young man. Tragicallyhe died soon of a kidney condition. His work was continuedby another research student after his death. This newresearch student was perhaps one of the first to register asudden and temporary increase in the neutron flux due, aswas soon established, to a large solar flare. His first reactionwas to attribute the vast increase in the counting rate herecorded to a malfunction of his apparatus. He thereforeswitched off all his circuits for a time to check hiselectronics and, finding no fault, switched them on again. Hecould not explain the effect, nor did he inform hissupervisor. This disaster only came to light when the solarflare had been reported by groups world wide and whenBlackett inquired why this effect had not been seen inManchester.This event, in addition to the misfortune of missing animportant discovery, is one of the many examples illustratingthe front line role played in research by graduate students inmissing - or recognising - important events. I had beenfortunate in Born’s generous attitude giving me full creditfor my breakthrough in calculating the phonon spectrum.Cases where the deserved credit for a discovery has not beengiven to young researchers are well known in physics. Onthe other hand blame is easily attached to a junior person,when the graduate student missed what he should have seen.

166

In the Manchester case the student was blamed. Hissupervisor, however, was promoted to a readership soonafter.

Blackett had been persuaded that an up-to-date physicsdepartment was not complete without a chair of theoreticalphysics. Leon Rosenfeld, famous for his work in Bohr’sdepartment and his paper with Møller, accepted the chair.Blackett was never fully convinced, perhaps influenced by JG Wilson’s opinion, of the usefulness to him of thisappointment, complaining often that Rosenfeld had donelittle to help cosmic ray research, although L Michel, aFrench graduate student of Rosenfeld’s, had done usefulwork establishing the existence of different kinds of muons.Personally I profited from this new department of theoreticalphysics, when J Hamilton working in Rosenfeld’sdepartment had found time to help me with showercalculations. I think Blackett was happier when Rosenfeldleft later and a theoretical astrophysicist, Z Kopál, took hisplace.

Rosenfeld’s appointment made a great difference also to mepersonally, because it created employment for my new brideMarcelle who became his part time multilingual secretary.Later on we found that the space between our counter‘graves’ and our hut, not far from Professor Rosenfeld’soffice, was a useful parking place for my daughter Barbara’spram. When Marcelle had to take dictation from Rosenfeld,she would leave baby Barbara amidst the ‘graves’, where Icould keep an eye on her. It had been a great relief to us thatthese circumstances enabled Marcelle to work. Without herwork we would have been hard pressed to bring up a youngfamily on a research assistant’s salary when at the time wehad to support my mother also, until eventually the Germangovernment restored her pension.

167

Chapter 15 - Moving On

When I see today what has been written about Blackett littlecomes across that does justice to the passion which hebrought to physics, to his work in scientific governmentcommittees and to his political views. His passionateapproach would explain why in these committees frictionsarose which have been mentioned in biographies elsewhere.I liked his approach to problems which could result inbrilliantly intuitive judgements.He was very good looking. Tall with dark, slightly greying,wavy hair he was an imposing figure. I was impressed by hisfascinating personality, his drive and his energy. I alsoagreed with many of his views, but thought they containedsome contradictions. He was an internationalist and socialist.At the same time he held some traditionalist views. I thoughtthat his English education and possibly his initial career inthe Navy had left him with certain prejudices which were incontrast with his, on the whole, progressive views.Personally I did not feel that he regarded me so much as aforeigner, but rather as a product of Southampton UniversityCollege. Wilson in fact once introduced me as such tosomeone. I remember Blackett on seeing our somewhatuntidy workplace asking me to tidy it up, because there were‘foreigners coming’ to see his laboratory. I think it was onlywhen I applied for a post at Manchester that he had thecorrect information about my past. Equally, both Jánossyand Occhialini felt that in his department they were not fullyappreciated. In Jánossy’s case this came to a head in mysecond year in Manchester when he did not offer Jánossy asenior lectureship as he had done to other members of hisstaff of the same age. Jánossy then accepted a chair offeredto him by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, an

168

institute that had already welcomed Schrödinger and, for ashort time, W Heitler.

Nobody could fail to be impressed by Blackett’s way ofmaking decisions about research ideas. Here he could bebrilliantly right and would be rewarded by outstandingsuccesses. His scientific intuition was sound, but as to hisjudgement of people I thought - and I was to suffer from it -he was sometimes swayed by the opinions of prejudicedadvisers.If on occasions his ideas were wrong he could more oftenthan not be persuaded to change them. His passionateapproach to politics and to wartime research certainlyirritated some people, but also inspired others. On oneoccasion I earned some black marks in his book whenJánossy told him, as perhaps he should not have done, that Ihad reservations about his new theory of magnetism. At thattime he seemed completely unaware of my work prior to mytime in Southampton.The Nobel Prize was awarded to Blackett in 1948. Theaward came soon after the V-particle discovery, but Blackettfelt, and told us so, that the award might have beenprecipitated by this latest discovery, but probablyacknowledged the value of his work over a period of time.The award also cited the discovery of the electron-positronpair production in his cloud chamber.

Blackett had seen during the war how much scientificprogress, both in basic and in applied research, could beachieved by the judicious use of government funds. He madeit part of his work to strengthen the DSIR, the Departmentfor Scientific and Industrial Research, the main fundingagency for civil research and to persuade the government toincrease its support for this Department. Pre-war thegovernment had hoped that the Department would be fundedin equal parts by government and by industry. I do not thinkthis was ever achieved, even for a short period.

169

Blackett had understood that government would have to playa more decisive part both in funding and in stimulatingresearch to achieve its avowed post-war plans and waspressing for funds for research in the universities atgovernment level. His forceful personality and his drivemade an impact also at international level. He supported, asfar as he could, Pierre Auger’s attempts to persuade DeGaulle’s government to allot more funds for science inFrance. Other countries too, India in particular, benefitedfrom his advice. Wherever he went science departmentswould draw on his war time experience and on his know-how in organising research teams and finding finance for it.He told me that he was worried that in the United States atthe time support for civil science came to a large extent fromthe military and the navy. While he was glad that at leastthese agencies were doing something for science he thoughtthat eventually ‘who paid the piper called the tune’ and thatcivil science should be free to set its own goals. Soon,however, his fears would lessen as the United States wouldadopt machinery to oversee and fund science and technologyfar superior to what we had been able to achieve in thiscountry.

He was known in the Labour Party and by the government atthe time for his progressive ideas on science. Hence it wasnot surprising that he would be asked to become Head of theDepartment of Physics at Imperial College when thegovernment approved plans to reshape and expand ImperialCollege. The plans included a new physics building and thecreation of many new chairs. Blackett was surely the rightman to guide this transformation. He moved to London in1953, excited by the new assignment and by being part ofthe cultural life in London

Mentioning above Marcelle and Barbara shows that it wasnot all cosmic rays for me in Manchester. Again physics andmy private life had been involved with all kinds of politics.

170

In 1946 my brother had been in France on an assignment forthe U S government and had enquired about our uncle. Thedramatic news was that our uncle and his wife, although bothFrench nationals, had been arrested by the Frenchgendarmerie and had ‘disappeared’ after first being sent tothe infamous French camp at Drancy, then handed over tothe Germans and transported to Auschwitz. They werearrested in May 1944, only weeks before the region wherethey lived was liberated. It appears that neighbours haddenounced them and after their arrest had stolen their privatebelongings including money, jewellery and other valuables.Their niece, my cousin by marriage, had lived with them forsome time, but had moved first to Clermont-Ferrand andafter the war to Paris. She gave my brother a copy of myuncle’s will and then emigrated to the United States.

I had as yet no passport and could not travel abroad. My oldGerman passport had been sent to the Home Office togetherwith my application for naturalisation, but during the war nosuch applications were being processed. Now EstherSimpson, the most efficient Secretary of the Society for theProtection of Science and Learning, informed me that myapplication would have to be resubmitted, and that it shouldqualify for priority consideration. I had very strong supportin this from Professor Taylor describing the work I had doneat Southampton. In my original application Sir HerbertGrierson, Emeritus Professor of English at Edinburgh, hadbeen one of my required four sponsors, but he had died justbefore the end of the war. I asked Miss Simpson whether Iwould need another sponsor, or whether Sir Herbert’ssignature on my original application would suffice. Theanswer I received showed that even in this serious matter ofnaturalisation there was room for British humour. Shereplied that I would need another sponsor, since Sir Herbert‘could hardly be interviewed by the Home Office’.I was naturalised in 1947 and as soon as I had my passportwent to Paris. There I met another cousin of mine who had

171

survived the occupation with false papers and also friends ofmy family who had survived the war in Vichy-France. It isthrough these friends that I met Marcelle who had beenworking for the resistance during the war. There was noformal engagement, but after I had returned to Manchester acloseness grew between us through an intense and searchingcorrespondence. After my third visit to Paris in March 1948Marcelle returned with me to Manchester. We were marriedshortly after in April by Special Licence.

I had to apologise to Marcelle for getting her away fromParis and offering her Manchester in exchange. The contrastbetween the two cities could not have been stronger.However she had heard a lot about life in Manchester andthe proud claim of the Mancunians that what Manchesterwas thinking today London would think about onlytomorrow, and in no time we had built up a circle of friendsof university people and others. These included the painterEmmnuel Levy and journalists working for the, thenManchester, Guardian. There were, however, two instanceswhich surprised Marcelle. Coming from the station sheadmired the large Victorian buildings in the city. Their darkexteriors reminded her of the black granite she had seen usedin buildings in the Auvergne. I stopped the taxi, took out mypenknife and scraped with it the facade of a building. Shethen saw that the buildings were not clad in granite, but ingrime accumulated over the years due to dirt in the rainwater. The other experience was much more unpleasant anddeeply shocked Marcelle who was not expecting it. We hadseen an advertisement in the evening paper advertising - arare event - a flat to let. We went to that address at theadvertised time and waited outside together with perhapsfifty other interested people. At the appointed time a littleman appeared outside the front door. He described the flatand stated that this was an English house, and Jews need notapply. Marcelle had thought that the war had put an end to

172

all that discrimination, and especially in England. It took hera long time to recover from the shock.

As in Southampton I kept up my interest in science policy. Ihad joined the local branch of the AScW which was quiteactive in Manchester and contained many academics. Iaccepted, too, my election to the local committee of theWEA, the Workers Educational Association, because Ihoped to work for an extension of its science programme tobe devised jointly with the university’s extra-muraldepartment.I was still a member of the science policy committee of theAScW when a national education conference was planned tobe held in Manchester. The science policy committeedecided that they could save expenses if I would be theAScW representative, as I was fully aware of theAssociation’s policies and aims in education. It was a goodconference and we had extensive press coverage. Theconference was chaired by the chairman of the ManchesterCity Education Committee. There were representatives ofmost national organisations concerned about science andeducation including the National Union of Students whoserepresentative made a very good speech. An outstandingpersonality on the platform was the High Master ofManchester Grammar School, (later) Lord James. BothBlackett and Bernal were at the conference. I had about tenminutes allotted for my speech and decided to make anoriginal contribution. I intended to outline the AScW’spolicy in general terms, but to emphasize that in one respectI was not speaking for the AScW. The Association’s policywas to advocate much larger government support for highereducation. I agreed with this but thought that the way moneywas being elicited from the Treasury for Higher Educationwas inefficient and undignified for the universities. At thetime the so-called ‘University Grants Committee’ (UGC), acommittee situated within, but ‘independent’ of, theTreasury in its deliberations, would go cap-in-hand to the

173

Chancellor, advocate their case for funds which they hopedto allocate to the universities and wait for a decision to bemade finally by the Treasury. I thought that the decision-making process was clouded and also that in future thegovernment would insist that funding of universities waspart of education policy and should be linked more directlyto the Cabinet. I could not imagine that governmentexpenditure for higher education which was to expandgreatly could continue to be administered by a friendly chatbetween a delegation of academics, however eminent, andthe Chancellor of the Exchequer, as had been described tome when I met Hugh Gaitskill. He was then the formerChancellor after the Conservatives had won the election. Ithought that there should be a government office dealingwith universities. Even a Minister of Higher Educationloosely connected to the then Minister for Education mightbe worth considering.I was to give my talk in the afternoon. At lunch I foundmyself seated opposite both Blackett and Bernal. They wereappalled by my ideas. I should have thought that theseconvinced socialists would have agreed that it was the roleof government to shape university politics and back themfinancially. Yet both, especially Bernal, argued for the thenexisting British system. One of Bernal’s characteristics werethat once he had made a decision which fitted his generalscheme of science he could not be dissuaded by arguments.He maintained that academic freedom would be lost if myideas were adopted. Moreover these ideas coming from me,a representative of the AScW, even if proposed as a personalview, would lay the Association open to accusations ofpromoting a kind of French dirigisme, if not Marxistdictatorship. I could not convince him or Blackett that myproposed system could safeguard academic freedom as hadbeen shown in France and the Netherlands. In fact in theWeimar republic the safeguards had been deplorablysuccessful, because they saved the positions of all the fascistand reactionary academics who could freely peddle their

174

views in the universities. Still, after having been subjected tothe criticism of these two eminent members of the AScW Irealised that I had no choice but to abandon my preparedscript and deliver an - in my opinion - very dull talk.

Near the end of my three-year assistantship the departmentadvertised the posts of an assistant lecturer and of a lecturer.My co-worker, D.Broadbent, was appointed assistantlecturer, and Butler was appointed lecturer. I had applied forthe lectureship and, formally, also for the other post, but Iknew that in view of Butler’s work he could not very well berefused promotion. I knew also that my application had beendiscussed at a staff meeting and that J G Wilson had statedthat in his opinion I would not make a good teacher. I do notknow how he could have formed this opinion, since apartfrom a few demonstration periods in the laboratories I hadnot taught in Manchester. He could possibly have heard memention the heavy teaching duties we had in Southamptonand my relief at spending my time in Manchester principallyon research. I was short listed, but as it turned out Blackettcould not have read my referees’ opinions until perhaps afew hours before the interview. I thought it mostextraordinary that about two or three hours before theinterview Blackett called me in, asked me to go to mylodgings and fetch a copy of my paper on the phononspectrum. He must have left reading Born’s letter of supportuntil shortly before then. At the interview he complimentedme on the paper, saying that he would not have been able towrite it, but did not offer me the post. No mention was madeof my teaching record in Southampton.When shortly afterwards a lectureship was advertised inLeeds I applied for it. This time I was lucky in that Blacketthad to deliver a lecture in Southampton where he met myprevious head of department, Professor Taylor. It seems thathe was told of my successful teaching during the war whichblotted out Wilson’s quite inaccurate assessment of mycapacity as a teacher. My ability to do research was not in

175

doubt, and I was appointed at Leeds in 1949. Moreover I wasinstalled with the seniority I would have had in Southamptonby that time had I not left the College.

176

Chapter 16 - A Cosmic Ray

Laboratory In Leeds

I had been interviewed first by Professor R Whiddington, thehead of the physics department, and then by E C Stoner whoheld a personal chair. Stoner was well aware of my work inEdinburgh. His research in magnetism had made him one ofthe leaders in this field and in, what was known then as,solid state physics. The day before the official interview hetook me to his office where he asked me some verysearching questions. One of them was whether I had apreference between research and teaching. He was clearlysatisfied when I told him quite frankly that I liked teaching,but would not be happy if there were a preponderance of it atthe expense of research such as I had experienced in wartime Southampton.Stoner had made his name in 1924, when he had proposed aningenious solution to the problem of the distribution ofelectrons in the atom, a solution which was virtuallyidentical but in name with the Pauli Principle. This and hissubsequent work on magnetism had made him progress froma lectureship to a personal chair in 1939, but only after theUniversity had been shamed into offering him the chair twoyears after he had been elected a Fellow of the RoyalSociety.

I would come to like Stoner very much. I got to know him asan utterly straight person. In his very tactful but penetratingway he often showed an amazing insight both in physics andin personal matters. He did not have Blackett’s often quiteimpetuous approach to problems, but in his unassuming andyet persistent manner often succeeded in getting his way.Such successes, however, quite often made him unpopular

177

with colleagues who were incapable of understanding hisways.I am sure he was glad to have me in the department, but Iwas taken aback a little later when Stoner told me that I wasfortunate in that Dr Wohlfarth had just left the departmentfor another post, otherwise it might have been ‘difficult’ tohave two members of staff who were (Jewish?) refugees.This was in spite of the fact that Wohlfarth was a child whenhis family had come to Britain and had been educated here. Ihad had a similar experience just before I left Southampton.A niece of the Turk sisters, Aviva, who had come to thiscountry as a child and had qualified and worked as a nurseduring the war, wrote to me that she had been refused a placeat Southampton on a social science course. She had been toldthat there were a limited number of places, and thatSouthampton gave priority to British born applicants. WhenI inquired into this matter - at the time when I was still inSouthampton - I received a cold reply. The departmentconfirmed that this was indeed their policy, definitely not inkeeping with the ideas of the College’s benefactor ClaudeMontefiore, when I suggested that the war service of anapplicant, a former child refugee, should have been takeninto consideration. In Leeds there were only a few Jewishmembers of staff at the university, but to my knowledgenone in the medical faculty before the 1960's.

I was happy to be appointed at Leeds to a tenured post,because Marcelle was expecting our second child. Blackettcongratulated me and said that the Leeds physics departmentwas a ‘dead’ place, hoping that my appointment would makea difference there. However I found Leeds not dead, butcontaining interesting people and full of promise. Researchthere was not on the scale of Manchester physics, but Leedswas quite active in solid state physics. The main chair, theCavendish chair of physics, was held by Professor RWhiddington, FRS. He no longer had a research group andwas due to retire. But E C Stoner (a ‘good man’ according to

178

Blackett) had built up a very active ‘though small solid stategroup. On the experimental side this was led by F E(‘Henry’) Hoare. Another group also doing interesting solidstate work was led by J Ewles whom I had met before on theAUT committee, planning university expansion. P LMarsden was then interested in building a massspectrometer, but was soon to switch to solar cosmic raysand later to space physics. Another group doingcrystallographic work of high standard, mainly on minerals,was directed by G W Brindley who was soon to accept anoffer of a chair in the US when he failed to be promotedfrom his readership to a chair.

I now had an opportunity to start a line of research new toLeeds. The department had wanted to build up a nuclearphysics group and had made enquiries about Leeds’ chancesof obtaining funding for an accelerator, but had been toldthat individual universities could no longer expect suchfunding. National policy was to create central nationalfacilities accessible to a number of university researchgroups, rather than to fund such facilities at individualuniversities as had happened until then at Liverpool,Birmingham and Glasgow. Instead, a new accelerator wouldbe built and be available to universities, the ‘RutherfordLaboratory’, next to the Harwell research establishment, andthe even larger facility, partly funded with UK money, theEuropean nuclear accelerator (‘CERN’) near Geneva. Myappointment suited the department because cosmic rayresearch, with its affinity to both high energy physics andastrophysics, seemed an affordable way to do front line workin these fields. Also Stoner was quite pleased to have anexperimenter who had worked in theoretical physics in afield that was familiar to him. He even tried later on topersuade me to take some interest again in theoretical solidstate physics. By that time, however, I was firmly committed

179

to cosmic ray work where I saw some new lines of researchthat appealed to me and which I was anxious to follow up.The University as a whole had ambitious expansion plansalso. C H Morris had just been appointed Vice Chancellor,and he was intent on expanding science, but balanced bystrong arts departments. Up to that time the University hadbeen known more for its commitment to applied science, thatis to the technological departments like engineering, mining,textile and colour chemistry and leather, all of interest tolocal industries. It had nevertheless a strong, if small, Artsfaculty. During the next few years Morris’ expansion plansbegan to take shape adding new buildings and expandingstaff and increasing student numbers. The University beganto develop during my tenure and now is one of the leadingestablishments in higher education in this country.I started work in Leeds in October 1949, and at first my timewas taken up in preparing lectures, by laboratory teachingand by working on the interpretation of the Manchesterresults. Teaching was, and still is today, taken very seriouslyin Leeds, and I had my full complement of lectures anddemonstrating in the teaching laboratories. I was a bitapprehensive, lest teaching should be given undue priority,but in my second year when I began to devise newexperiments the balance between my teaching and researchwas leaning more in favour of research on which eventuallyI would spend half of my available time. After some years atLeeds my favourite lecture course became ‘atomic andnuclear physics’ given to the second year undergraduates.This started with the beginnings of quantum mechanics andled up to the level of Fermi’s lecture course on nuclearphysics. It also included an introduction to relativity. I amtold that the students enjoyed the course as much as I did.One of my students would be A M (Michael) Hillas wholater, after taking his PhD degree, would do postgraduatework on cosmic ray showers with Cranshaw at Culham, thenreturn to Leeds to work in cosmic ray research achievingimportant results and finally promotion to a chair.

180

I began to construct a cosmic ray shower array whichfeatured several improvements on the design of theManchester apparatus in two major aspects. One was asimplification of the electronics resulting in drasticshortening of the construction time. The other was that Idesigned a device which would bias the apparatus toresponding preferentially when the shower axis struck nearthe centre of my array. This ‘core detector’ facilitated theanalysis of the results for the majority of the showers towhich the array responded. I now could experimentallydetermine, with reasonable accuracy, shower parameters as afunction of distance from the shower core, thus avoiding atoo complicated analysis of the data, such as we had toemploy in Manchester. A few years later I also looked at thetime variations of the various shower components in order tofind a preferred direction of incidence of the showercomponents, but with negative results.

I soon obtained results showing that the number of hadronsdecreased more steeply with distance from the core than themuons. I very much wanted to measure the energy carried bythe individual shower components, and in particular theenergy carried by the hadrons in the central shower column.This would be an important step forward in understandingshower development by going beyond recording just thedensity of particles registered by counters. I designed a fairlyrudimentary device, using ‘proportional’ counters which canmeasure the ionisation produced by hadrons and henceindicate their energies, but realised that the technologyrequired to process the signals cheaply and efficiently justwas not available at the time. I would have to wait more thanten years for the arrival of integrated circuit chips, before Icould make reasonably reliable energy measurements. In themeantime I extended the array to distances larger than inManchester by running cables from a central position on theroof of the physics building to that of the chemistry

181

department, thus recording counter responses up to distancesof about 100 m from the shower axis. The long cablesbetween the departments made people in the universityaware of my work and literally put cosmic ray research onthe map in Leeds. T Shaw, a very gifted graduate student,had joined me in October 1950, and within much less thantwo years the first stage of our array was operative.

The main aims of cosmic ray research of showers havealways been to measure the spectrum of their energies, theircomposition, to determine their origin and to understand howthe incident particles were accelerated to their high energies.Some conclusions about the first two of these problemscould be drawn from measurements with a small array likemine. Larger arrays than that in Leeds, and detectors fasterthan Geiger counters were required to be able to extendmeasuring the shower spectrum to higher energies and becapable of more accurate timing of the arriving particles.Ever larger arrays should register showers due to incidentparticles of still higher energies, and one is naturally curiouswhether the spectrum we and others measured extendssmoothly to larger sizes triggered by incident particles oftruly enormous energies. Since the number of showersdecreases with size, one has to sample these showers onlarger catchment areas of up to thousands of km� to obtainstatistics comparable to those of the ‘small’ showers wemeasured in Manchester.Ideally one would like to have as many detectors as possibleto sample showers at high altitude and catch the number ofparticles adequate for determining shower sizes and theenergy carried. Hence each experiment since Auger’s timehas been a more or less ingenious attempt at compromise byplacing the maximum number of detectors over an area aslarge as possible compatible with available finance andeffective processing and recording the detectors’ responses.

182

On today’s available evidence 1 particle of energy above

1016

eV per m� steradian per year arrives at the earth. Myexperiment in Leeds which sampled particles up to distancesof 100 m was not large enough to record a shower initiatedby such a particle with sufficiently large statistics, but it didfill a gap left open by larger arrays investigating showerstructure.T E Cranshaw and W Galbraith, then both working at theatomic energy establishment at Harwell, were given theopportunity to construct a larger shower array on andecommissioned airfield at Culham near the Harwelllaboratory. This work, although far from the field of nucleartechnology, was made possible because John Cockcroft, onbeing appointed the first Director of the Harwell AtomicEnergy Establishment, had insisted that not all research atHarwell should be in nuclear technology, but that thereshould be feasibility of carrying on some unrelated basicresearch. This agreed policy would in the end producevaluable results by Cranshaw, John Jelley and W Galbraithamong others under the general direction of W JWhitehouse. Cranshaw and Galbraith used Geiger counterswith a fairly rough core selection system. They neverthelessarrived at estimates of shower particle distribution up to 600m from the axis with an array of about one half of 1 km�.Cranshaw and Galbraith concluded that they were measuring

showers of size up to nearly 109

particles due to primary

particles of up to 1016

eV. At the same time Jelley developeda new type of �erenkov detectors suitable for showermeasurements..

Much larger arrays were being built by two of Bruno Rossi’sgroups using large plastic scintillators as detectors. One ofthe groups was led by G Clark at MIT and the other by JLinsley in New Mexico with a detector array of 8 km�. Theteams were supported also by Kenneth Greisen, then at MITand soon to occupy a chair at Cornell.

183

Chapter 17 - Cosmic Ray Physicists

Meet in Mexico

I had just been two years in Leeds when, on the retirement ofProfessor Whiddington, Professor Stoner succeeded him inthe ‘Cavendish Chair of Physics’ as head of the departmentand J G Wilson was appointed Professor of Physics at Leeds.Friends tried to persuade me that the only way for me tosecure a senior post was to leave Leeds and, as Blackett hadsuggested to me once, go to Australia or, as my brotherurged me, join him in the United States. However, neitherMarcelle nor I wanted to leave this country, even if it meantthat professionally I might well be stymied.

Wilson’s appointment was not a bad choice from Leeds’point of view. He had made his reputation by some veryaccurate measurements when working with Blackett inLondon and later in Manchester with his large cloudchamber measurements. His experience in guiding much ofthe experimental cosmic ray research in Manchester and inproving his talents as careful administrator could benefitLeeds. He was probably not too pleased to find me alreadyresident in Leeds, and it would take him years to appreciatemy way of thinking. His appointment as Professor enabledhim to gather additional staff immediately. First of all hepersuaded P L Marsden to take an interest in solar cosmicrays. Finance for neutron monitors to observe the low energyregion of solar cosmic rays were easy to obtain, becauseinterest in the geomagnetic field and the influence of solaractivity and its variation with time was then at its height.Marsden was a very gifted experimenter and within arelatively short time had a neutron monitor running, in timeto catch a significant part of the neutron rate increase due tothe solar flare of 1956. Wilson also persuaded Leslie Hodsonwho had left Manchester for some very successful work in

184

the United States to return and join us in Leeds. Leslie cameto Leeds with an ambitious project to build a very largecloud chamber, three times as large as the new Manchesterchambers and big enough to accommodate in its volume allhis researchers and technicians. With his great experimentalskills he designed and constructed not only the chamber, butat a later stage other detectors, as well as interestingexperiments in the teaching laboratories. His researchstudents would greatly benefit from his talents.

I was never quite clear about the nature of Wilson’srelationship with Stoner. I do know that when Stoner died in1966 Wilson strongly opposed that the building containingthe physics department and the university’s mainadministration should be called after Stoner. It is only afterWilson’s death about 25 years later that the building wascalled the ‘E C Stoner Building.’

Just before Wilson’s arrival my shower array had begun toyield interesting results, and I was ready to report them to anInternational Conference at Guanajuato University inMexico in September 1955. The conference was organisedby Professor Manuel Vallarta, a pioneer in calculating thebehaviour of cosmic ray particles in the magnetic fields inthe solar system. This international cosmic ray conference,organised by the Mexican National Institute of ScientificResearch and supported by the International Union of Pureand Applied Physics, IUPAP, was planned specifically as ameeting of workers in the field to discuss the then presentstate of cosmic ray research. The attendance was byinvitation only so that the number of participants could besmall and allow for detailed discussions in plenary sessions.I had not at first received an invitation, because I had onlyjust obtained the first results from my apparatus, and theywere as yet not published. H Elliott, who had moved withBlackett to Imperial College had compiled a provisional listof the British cosmic ray workers, but had left me out. I had

185

to go and see him and tell him of my unpublished results,before he forwarded my name to the Mexican organisers.I was delighted to hear from Professor Vallarta that theconference would be dealing not only with the propagationof cosmic rays in geomagnetic fields and the effect on themof solar activity, but would include papers also on primarycosmic rays and air showers measurements.I was on holiday in Cornwall with my family when Ireceived a large postal packet containing an officialinvitation from Mexico, all the relevant information aboutthe conference and the assurance that my expenses would bepaid by the organisers.

The Mexican conference at the University of Guanajuatoturned out to be a most exciting event and gave a greatstimulus to cosmic ray research the world over. There werefewer than 80 delegates, a very small number compared withcomic ray conferences these days, and it was possible tohave instructive, and often heated, discussions of manysubmitted papers. It is only after Mexico that cosmic rayconferences would grow in size and duration, and parallelsessions and separate meetings of subgroups became theorder of the day when much of the informality would be lost.I was able to make contacts with the American groups atMIT, led by Bruno Rossi, and profited much fromdiscussions with G Cocconi, then at Cornell. Cocconi notonly gave the keynote paper on Extensive Air Showers, butalso organised and chaired the session on air showers. Heexplained that he would order the papers in order of size ofthe respective shower arrays, beginning with the smallest. Itherefore had the fullest attention when I started off thesession with my paper, immediately after Cocconi’sintroduction.

Most of the invited papers were of very high standard. Theone, as it happened, not using the usual cosmic ray detectors,but perhaps the most impressive by its clarity of exposition

186

and its brilliant results was given by the Dutch astronomer JH Oort. I remember being fascinated by his slides taken withthe 200” telescope at Mt Wilson. The slides showed thepolarization of the continuous light of the Crab nebula. Theyconfirmed the theory by I S Shklovsky that the continuousradiation of the nebula was a synchrotron radiation, such aswas first proposed by H Alfvén and A N Herlofson toexplain the radiation of radio sources.

The planned programme of the conference was interruptedby the exciting event of the arrival of a Soviet delegation. Arepresentative Russian group had been invited, but had notappeared when the conference opened. It was to be the firstinternational conference after the war where the results ofSoviet air shower experiments were presented. Thedelegation arrived in the middle of a session and broughtwith it many new results. We had to overcome languagedifficulties, because the Soviet embassy in Mexico City hadnot realised that the official conference language wasEnglish and had provided an interpreter who had onlyRussian and Spanish. Nevertheless G T Zatsepin of theLebedev Institute in Moscow, in spite of his unwieldy slidesof non-Western size, made a great impact when he presentedthe latest Soviet work on air showers. I could not understandmuch of his spoken remarks, but the slides clearly showedthat there was much air shower work going on in the SovietUnion in Moscow and at high altitudes, as well as theoreticalwork led by Zatsepin himself.

The conference ended with a sour aftertaste for Blackett whoat that time was President of the cosmic ray commission ofIUPAP. Attempting to travel to Canada through the US, thenin the grip of McCarthyism, he was refused entry into theUnited States after, as I was told, an unpleasant interviewwith the US immigration service. Mrs Blackett’s complaintof the treatment meted out to a Nobel laureate by USofficials fell on deaf ears. My own brush with McCarthyism

187

had been less intense, but quite significant. I had intended tostop over on my return from Mexico in Washington DCwhere my brother was then working in the State Department.For this I had to apply for a Visitor’s Visa and beinterviewed by the US Vice Consul in Manchester beforeleaving for Mexico. I was given a form to fill asking for allmy previous addresses during the preceding 10 years or soand for the names of all the organisations I was or had been amember. The Vice Consul turned out to be a ratherunpleasant stout lady whose interest seemed to centre on mymembership of the ’Liberal Jewish Synagogue’ andparticularly on the word ‘Liberal’. I explained to her that theword ‘Liberal’ described a Jewish congregation similar to aReform synagogue in the US. She accepted my explanation,but added that the FBI would soon find out whether I hadspoken the truth! Otherwise she saw no objection and I wasgranted the visa, not surprisingly to me because neither mybrother nor I had ever been a communist, even in our studentdays.

Shortly after Mexico a cosmic ray conference dealingspecifically with extensive air showers was organised by thecosmic ray workers at Harwell and held at Oxford in 1956.All British and most other European cosmic ray groups wererepresented. W L Kraushaar had come from Rossi’s group atMIT, and S Vernov, G T Zatsepin and A Chudakov fromMoscow. We also profited from the attendance of P HFowler and C J Waddington who reported their results,obtained with photographic emulsions carried by balloons,on the nature of incident cosmic ray particles at high altitude.This time we gained a much deeper insight into the work ofthe Russians than in Mexico thanks to the detailed papersthey had prepared. Apart from his own contribution Zatsepinread papers by G B Khristiansen and S I Nikolsky.Nikolsky’s paper reported results obtained in the Pamirmountains at a height of 4370 m. He estimated that in

showers of energy of about 1014

eV , of a size in which I was

188

interested, their cores would contain a concentration of

hadrons of energy of 1011

– 1012

eV, as I had estimated whenworking on my experiment in Leeds. I was particularlyinterested to see that Nikolsky’s experimental set-up wasvery similar to mine. Where our apparatus differed was intheir sizes. The surface of his detector was larger than mineby a factor 20! Although it was pleasing for me to see aconfirmation of my estimates and the similarity of design tothat of my detectors, it was also very depressing, because atthat time I could not hope to receive a grant large enough forconstructing a detector similar in size to Nikolsky’s andemulate him by assembling the large team necessary to runand to analyse such a big experiment. However, from theOxford conference onwards I remained in touch withNikolsky and enjoyed many exchanges of ideas with himand his group.

Shortly after this conference I went to see Blackett inLondon. I told him that I was not prepared to leave thecountry in order to have a senior post or even a chair. I hadbegun to expand my research group and at long last hadseveral publications in preparation, dealing with my‘Mexican ‘ and other results. At the same time I tried topersuade him that we needed in this country a cosmic rayshower experiment conceived on a scale much larger thaneven that run by Cranshaw at Culham, but of a sizecomparable with those of Rossi’s group at MIT and of theRussian groups. We should have a detector in this countrydesigned to explore the upper limit of the shower spectrum.It was not known up to which energies the spectrum wouldfollow the power law which had been establishedexperimentally at lower energies, and whether there wouldbe a change or perhaps a cut-off at higher energies. Therehad been no indication of a change of the spectrum at thehighest energy the Culham array had registered. On the otherhand, John Linsley, a member of Rossi’s MIT group, hadmeasured three large showers at energies he calculated to be

189

in the region or beyond 1017

eV. This seemed to indicate thatthere was not only no cut-off at these energies, but that thespectrum flattened, rather than steepened as a power lawwould demand. Only very large shower arrays stretchingover at least 10 km�, I thought, could provide sufficientstatistics needed to examine the highest cosmic particles’energies, their arrival directions and their origin. Blackettagreed with me, but thought that the country could not affordsuch a large experiment.

190

Chapter 18 - The British Large Air

Shower Experiment

Soon after my talk with Blackett facilities for research onlarge air showers in this country had to be reviewed.Cockroft’s stipulation that a small part of the Harwellestablishment’s programme should be reserved for basicresearch had been disliked by the UK government from itsinception and he could resist changes no longer. Thegovernment held that ‘pure’ research should not be part ofthe Atomic Energy Establishment’s remit. Cranshaw’s airshower experiment at Culham was the only major basicresearch left. Now the government had decided to use theCulham site for the new fusion project and terminated the airshower experiment, finally putting paid to Cockcroft’sidealistic conception of Harwell containing a section notconcerned with applied research.

By that time, however, the importance of shower researchhad been understood by many more physicists andastrophysicists. The lobbying by cosmic ray physicists,including myself, together with the realisation that with theclosure of Culham the country would lose its largest cosmicray shower experiment was bearing fruit. Closing down theshower array at Culham would mean that Britain would nolonger take part in the endeavours of the major countries ofthe world, namely to explore the cosmos along one of a mostpromising and at the same time least expensive of avenues.Cosmic ray showers, the signature of the very high energyparticles and a key to the understanding of the cosmos and tothe highest energy interactions in physics, could beexamined at relatively low cost, since the money to be spenton designing and constructing a suitable shower array wasless than that spent by only one of the detector collaborations

191

at CERN. Such was the case for constructing a large cosmicray shower experiment which should be even larger than thatto be abandoned at Culham.

A conference was held in Leeds in 1958 in order to discusshow to maintain a British presence in this world wide cosmicray research. The main participants were Blackettaccompanied by H R Allan of Imperial College, G DRochester and A W Wolfendale, both of Durham, and J GWilson, R M Tennent and myself of Leeds. Some scientificpapers on the state of the art of detectors suitable for cosmicray air showers were given, including one by Harold Allanwho reported on his work in improving the design of someof the detectors developed at Culham. I gave a short paper,but it seemed to be generally agreed that the case for a largeshower experiment had been made, and the discussionchiefly centred on the scale of the proposed showerexperiment, the detectors to be used and on the applicationfor funds.It was decided to present the project to the DSIR, therelevant research council at the time, as a collaborativeexperiment of the three physics departments of Leeds,Imperial College and Durham, with the possibleparticipation of other physics departments, notablyNottingham. Bristol, led by C F Powell, supported theproposal and kept an option open to participate, but in theend did not exercise it. A collaboration of severaluniversities at a central facility was very much in line withgovernment policy as Blackett explained. He also stated thatas a council member of DSIR he could not apply for a granthimself. Instead he asked Wilson to apply to the DSIR forfunding and sign the application as proposed chiefinvestigator.

The climate of public support for science in Britain in 1958was favourable, and the government was relativelybenevolent as regards science and higher education. A sum

192

of the order of £100,000 for air shower research wasaffordable, if spread over three years, and possibly followedby supplementary grants over a number of years. Air showerresearch seemed attractive to the scientific community andpoliticians alike who appreciated its feasibility and relativelow cost compared to accelerator or space physics.The project fitted in with the expansion of Higher Educationtaking place at the time. The government was just about toinstall the Robbins commission (in 1961) and ask them toreport on expanding higher education. The stated objectivesof the Robbins Report were to bring British universities upto the highest standards set by universities world wide insize, number and status. The government accepted the mainrecommendations of the Robbins Report, published inOctober 1963, and decided to create entirely new universitiessupplemented by a programme of increasing studentnumbers and adding buildings and equipment to theestablished universities. Cynics would have it that the PrimeMinister, Mr Macmillan, was anticipating a wave ofunemployment and that a proposed expansion of studentnumbers would take a considerable number of young peopleoff the labour market.

When the application signed by Wilson had been grantedand a suitable site for the experiment had been found atHaverah Park, not far from Leeds, Martin Tennent and Iwere charged with starting the project. Like manyintrinsically exciting projects it had a rather prosaicbeginning. To start with it meant ordering and erectingsuitable huts and installing and cabling the detectors. Thesewere large water tanks in which a muon particle would giverise to �erenkov radiation to be measured by photo-multipliers and their response processed electronically. Thedetectors were similar to those first designed at Culham anddeveloped later at Imperial College.

193

I was very enthusiastic about the new shower array, whichbegan as a feasibility study with a 500 m� array, planned toexpand later to an area of 12 km�, about 25 times the Culhamarea. I was less enthusiastic about my personal role in thisexperiment. I was 43 when we held the colloquium at Leedsand I was ready for more responsibility than that given tome. I realised that I could be useful in building up the newexperiment, but I also estimated that this would not deliverimportant new results for at least ten years. Such anexperiment required a younger man, and Leeds was fortunatesoon to attract A A (Alan) Watson who would give hisenergetic and efficient attention to all the details which therunning and eventual extension of the experiment entailedand would later take a leading part in defining and achievingimportant objectives. He would be supported by RJO (Bob)Reid, a first class experimenter, who was in charge of thedaily running of the array.

My own interests were now divided between several fields,not all of which were in physics.Naturally my first priority was to help getting the showerexperiment at Haverah Park off the ground. Here my owncontribution was to play a part in designing the recordingequipment, jointly with the electronics technician of theImperial College physics department. Blackett was quiteimpressed when I took him to Haverah Park in my car andwe could show him shower signals on an oscilloscope abouttwo years after we had obtained our grant, ‘though it tooklonger until a proper automatic recording equipment was inplace.

An experiment which needed to be carried out immediatelywas to compare the response of the �erenkov showerdetector tanks with that of the Geiger and scintillatordetectors which had been used in most of the cosmic rayexperiments hitherto. I regarded this experiment at first as apurely technical exercise, necessary but dull. I soon changed

194

my mind. With two postgraduate students, R Dufresne and LTowers, I devised an arrangement using large scintillators ofarea comparable to that of the tanks, and we studied theresponses of tanks and scintillators to the same events. Itturned out that the experiment not only yielded the technicaldata for which it had been designed, but it also provided newinformation about the composition of large showers. Thiswas of great interest, because the results did not rely onsimulation models and Monte Carlo calculations, but wereobtained by registering directly how the counters respondedwith distance from the central column of showers. TheHaverah park array was designed such that by a kind oftriangulation process the position of the central shower axis,the core in which I had always been interested, could bedetermined and related to my measurements. These showedthat at more than 1000 m from their axes showers, even

showers of ‘medium’ size of 2 x 107 particles still containeda considerable number of photons with minimum energies of1MeV. My report on this result at the London Cosmic Rayconference in 1965 was well received. I remember S Colgatestopping me when I was leaving the lecture theatre askingwhether I was sure of my results. Later in 1970 my paperwith L Towers underlined some of my conclusions. Thispaper is still being quoted and has been of considerable helpin the design of some of the very large shower arraysoperating today.

195

Chapter 19 - The Highest Energies -

An End To The Shower Spectrum?

This was a time of many new discoveries in cosmic physics,and it was fascinating not to focus too narrowly on showerwork, but to see air showers as part of a cosmic picturewhich was unfolding rapidly. In January 1967 I had the goodfortune to obtain a grant to attend the so-called TexasSymposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in New York.These ‘Texas’ symposia had started in a very informal wayin the University of Texas, but later every secondsymposium was held in places other than in Texas. Almostinevitably with time the symposia would become largeconferences with a multitude of papers submitted and withmany sessions. The last one I attended was in Berkeley in1992 which resulted by that time in a conference report of845 pages containing invited lectures and individual papers.In contrast the conference 25 years earlier was still fairlyinformal. It lasted 5 days, and after the invited papers therewould be an informal discussion. Quasars had just beendiscovered, and the first day was taken up with the latestmeasurements on them and other radio sources. On thesecond day A A Penzias gave a paper on the radiationbackground in space, and in the afternoon Kenneth Greisenspoke about the interaction of energetic particles with thebackground radiation. On the following days sessions dealtwith x-ray sources and with the first observations of cosmic� rays. There were interesting papers on the origin of cosmic� rays by V L Ginzburg and by G R Burbridge amongothers, and on mechanisms of particle acceleration. The lastday was given over to the theoreticians like Tommy Gold,Colgate and Woltjer on the theory of Quasars. R H Dickewas given his say on his doubts about Einstein’s theory ofgravitation, and it was light-heartedly explained that thedisappearance of Einstein’s large photograph, which had

196

graced the podium until the day he gave his paper, waspurely coincidental.Of course, for me who took a personal interest in large airshowers, Penzias’ and Greisen’s talks had a specialsignificance. The discovery by Penzias and R W Wilson ofthe cosmic background radiation in 1965 had confirmed oneof the consequences of the Big Bang, namely that the black-body radiation of 2.7ºK was predicted to fill space. Just priorto Greisen’s talk two papers had been published, one byGreisen himself and the other by G T Zatsepin and V AKuzmin in 1966. Both the American and the Russian groupcame independently to the same conclusion which were ofenormous significance for cosmic ray researchers examiningthe highest energies of incident cosmic ray particles givingrise to air showers. Their papers showed that the interactionof cosmic ray particles with the background radiation whichpervaded space would degrade the energies of cosmic rayprotons, such that after their travel through space distanceslarger than 100 parsecs the protons would have energies not

larger than 5x 1019

eV. Conversely if indeed showers werefound due to particles of larger energy, one could argue thatthe particles could have travelled a distance of only less than100 pc.

The interaction predicted by Greisen and by Zatsepin andKuzmin between the high-energy protons and the black bodyradiation became another enticing reason for probing thehigh energy region of the air shower spectrum. Would therebe an ‘end’ to the spectrum? Early experiments showed thatat high energies the spectrum falls off smoothly like a powerlaw , but the experiments by J Linsley, the member ofRossi’s group working at Volcano Ranch in New Mexicofrom early 1963, had produced some evidence that thespectrum flattens rather than follows the steeper power law.

At the highest energies which he estimated as 1019

eV, hefound showers incompatible with a spectrum declining like a

197

power law with an index generally accepted to be -3.18.Here the overriding question which needed to be resolvedwas how accurate was Linsley’s energy estimate or for thatmatter how accurate could any estimate be made of airshower energies. Other questions also arose. Is a cosmicproton alone responsible for shower development? Couldthere be heavier nuclei like iron incident on the earthinitiating showers, and what kind of showers? What wouldbe the angle of incidence of the high-energy particles?Would they show any preferred direction of incidence,pointing to an identifiable source of particles in the galaxy orbeyond?

Interestingly there was no mention of A Hewish’s name inthe original programme. He arrived late during thesymposium owing to his aircraft being diverted via Canadafor some reason, but then gave a paper on pulsars. Thereason for his omission from the printed invitation to thesymposium was of course that pulsars had only just beendiscovered, too late for inclusion in the original programme.In fact the discovery was published by A Hewish, S J(Jocelyn) Bell and others in Nature at about the same time asthat of the conference. The news of pulsars was still hot sothat, when I got back to Leeds, I could give a report of thelatest results on pulsars and their interpretation by Gold asneutron stars.

Many papers emanated from Haverah Park during thefollowing years, mainly by A A Watson, J G Wilson, andother senior members of the Leeds Haverah Park group andpostgraduates. They dealt with measurements of importantshower parameters which would throw light on the showerspectrum and shower structure. Also groups from Durhamand Nottingham universities were running supportingexperiments at Haverah Park. The main concern about thesuccess of the Haverah Park experiment had remained for along time how to interpret the recorded signals. How could

198

one derive accurately the really important showercharacteristics, the size and hence the energy carried by theinitiating particle as well as other shower characteristicsfrom the accumulated raw data?

A breakthrough in analysing the main Haverah Park datawas made when Michael Hillas had developed computersimulations that could be usefully applied to showeranalysis. They could achieve what in the Manchester dayswas impossible. Using the computers now available theLeeds group was the first to arrive at an estimate of showerenergies with some confidence. Alan Watson and his co-workers then felt safe to publish their estimates of theenergies of the largest showers they had recorded as about

5x1019

eV . They saw no indication of a cut-off of thespectrum. Similar energy estimates were obtained by theUtah group using two ‘fly’s eyes’ and later by groups inJapan and in Siberia.

The new type of shower detector, the so-called ‘Fly’s eye’was based on an original idea by Kenneth Greisen anddeveloped by the Utah group. The ‘fly’s eyes’ consist ofclosely packed clumps of hundreds of photomultipliers in aconfiguration similar to a fly’s eye pointing in directionsslightly different from each other into the atmosphere. Theyregister the fluorescent light caused by the shower photons inthe atmosphere and determine from them the showerparameters. Two fly’s eyes were used 3.3 km apart, one with880 and the other with 120 photomultipliers. The Utahgroup’s findings can to some extent be taken as independentconfirmation of the shower energies determined by theLeeds and other groups, because their detectors differedfrom those used by other groups and hence offered adifferent way of estimating the shower energy. By 1991

199

about 400 showers of energies larger than 1019

eV had beenclaimed worldwide.1

The ‘end’ of the spectrum continues to be a puzzle. What isthe answer if one knows, or assumes, that these high ultrahigh energetic showers are observed and that at the sametime no source of them has been observed in or near thegalaxy? Many models in cosmology and of high-energyinteractions hoping to resolve this puzzle have beenproposed to clear up this problem. Agreement, however,exists on one point: More experiments are necessary toprovide better statistics at the ‘end’ of the spectrum. Thismeans building larger arrays yielding better statistics inrecording showers initiated by particles of ultra highenergies. At first one would think that such experiments donot seem to be realistic given the practical and financialobstacles one might encounter, but estimates have shownthat a detector array spread over 3000 km� would give anannual yield of 5000 showers due to particles of energies

above 1019

eV. During the last few years discussions weretaking place by shower experts worldwide, led by AlanWatson and J W Cronin, whether a large array recordingsuch events could be constructed. The discussions resulted inagreement that such an experiment is feasible. A proposal,incorporating some brilliant innovations in detecting, timing

1 Papers published since this book was written cast doubt on the

calculated value of the cut-off energy of 1019

eV. It is argued thatGreisen and Zatsepin did not take into account ‘space-timequantization’, i.e. employ quantum theory of gravity applicable atvery high particle energies, instead of the classical theory ofgravity. Thus the Auger collaboration and experiments of similarsize that register the most energetic extensive showers will notonly throw light on the origin of cosmic rays, but on the physicsapplicable at these enormous energies. – If the above argumentsare correct then the Auger experiment now beginning to take datamay never discover a cut-off energy limit.

200

and recording the expected signals, has been agreed andfinancial support has been forthcoming for this physicallyand geographically vast enterprise. The project is goingahead now, with the detectors based at first in the Argentineand perhaps later in the USA and with the involvement ofgroups from other countries. In order to make the expensenot too large, but compatible with that for a large detector,such as are being built by groups working at CERN’s newaccelerator, showers will be sampled in an area of 3000 km�with a price ticket of the order of 48 M$. This should give anumber of 300-500 events due to primaries with minimum

energies of 1021

eV over 10 years if they exist. Theinternational collaboration of the countries involved has beencalled the ‘Pierre Auger’ project in honour of Auger, thediscoverer of the extensive air showers, ‘Les GrandesGerbes’. Other collaborations are in the planning stage,including one placing detectors on the International SpaceStation.

201

Chapter 20 - A New Particle? - Hopes

Raised and Dashed

I had not given up my interest in the cosmic ray hadroncomponent, since hadrons carry information about highenergy interactions. They also carry the memory of particlesinteracting at the top of the atmosphere, of protons or ofparticles of larger mass, e.g. of Fe nuclei. Presence orabsence of Fe nuclei in the incoming cosmic rays componentwould be of cosmological interest.Ever since Mexico I had been experimenting with designsenabling me to measure the energy of hadrons. The papersdescribing my results reported in Mexico had been longdelayed, because I had discovered mistakes in my graduatestudent’s calculations which took me some time to put right.This student had given me a headache also on other groundswhich may be worth mentioning. After leaving Leeds he hadobtained a post in one of the Defence departments and wasbeing considered for a mission to the Pacific where nucleartests were to be conducted and evaluated. This required anew round of security vetting, and one of those officerscharged with it called on me at my home. Now I have neverhad a student who was more taciturn about his private lifethan he was. I do not think that he was secretive. He just didnot seem to have any personal views he thought worthelucidating. Under the circumstances I could not give theinformation the security officer was looking for. Afterconsulting Professor Stoner the only information we couldcome up with was that the student had been a member of oneof the University’s cricket teams. I understand that thestudent was cleared.

My designs to measure hadron energies were based onproportional counters and chambers capable of measuring

202

the ionisation caused by hadrons passing through them. Thesignals from them would then indicate the hadron energies.These studies had given me some publishable results, but itwas not until 1965 that I could finalise the design of a so-called ionisation calorimeter that would be suitable for mypurpose. These calorimeters were not novel tools. They werebeing used to measure the energies of particles in acceleratorexperiments, and Nikolsky was measuring the energies ofcosmic ray hadron employing layers of very large ionisationchambers embedded in lead at his high-altitude laboratory.There was another arrangement first designed by theJapanese school who employed a mixture of ionisationdetectors and layers of emulsions, and later also anotherapparatus constructed by S Slavatinsky in the Pamirmountains. All these groups needed teams of perhaps 30 orso investigators to run their apparatus and to analyse theirdata. I thought that it would be possible to simplify thedesign of such complicated arrangements and at the sametime analyse the data produced electronically thus savingman or woman - N M Nestarova was running the Tien Shanarray at that time - power. I thought that crossed detectors ofsmall diameter would locate the position of particles moreaccurately than large chambers. The snag then was that an 8-layer arrangement would have to contain a vast number ofsmall detectors. However I calculated that a many-layereddetector, while preferable to measure energies moreaccurately, could be replaced by a two-layered device. If thetwo layers, separated by some lead, would register near-enough equal ionisation then these would indicate that thetrays had responded to the maximum of the ionisationtriggered by a hadron. This maximum was in itself a measureof the hadron energy. As to the electronics, the circuit designwas now very much eased by the availability of integratedcircuits, but still needed a certain amount of ingenuity toachieve an automatic read-out. The identification of the pathof the ionising particles traversing the calorimeter would befurther improved by additional layers of flash tubes, as

203

designed by the Durham group, and their responses, too,would be displayed after electronic processing.

When in 1965 I felt certain of the feasibility of my project Iapplied to the DSIR for a grant of about £12 000. At thattime it was no longer necessary for such applications to besubmitted by the head of the department. The proposedsenior investigator, in this case myself, would make theapplication. I was agreeably surprised when Wilsonsupported my application strongly. He pointed out that theproposed experiment on nucleons in air showers would befilling a gap which at first was left open at Haverah Parkbecause no reasonably economic way of measuring nucleonsin air showers had been suggested before. I also had a letterfrom Cecil Powell expressing his interest and asking me tokeep him informed of my results.The proposed apparatus had only one tenth the area of theRussian detector, but I hoped to enlarge it once the designhad proved successful. I was awarded a grant by the DSIR in1966, followed in due course by supplementary grantsextending the work till 1977.

I started this work with great enthusiasm and was joined byGordon Brooke who had come from Durham to take up atenured appointment as lecturer in Leeds and by John Baruchwho had been appointed experimental officer, a post fundedby my grant. Later on graduate students joined us. While thedesign of the main apparatus had been finalised and formedpart of my grant application, the electronic system had onlybeen sketched out. Its detailed design and that of theautomatic recording system was our main occupationsimultaneous with the construction of the calorimeter. Avital contribution was made by Gordon when he designed aningenious read-out system converting the pulse heights ofthe counters into widths to be read by an ‘exponential’ clock.This and other design features were of general interest andresulted in separate publications. Essentially we built a

204

computer that yielded data on tape which could then be readand printed out by the university main computer.But for one vital exception our home-made computerworked satisfactorily, and the calorimeter delivered theresults I had hoped for. I had been right in that many of thephysics results emerging from our measurements could beadequately determined by our two-layers system, rather thanby a multilayer system, because the energy recognised by itwas sufficiently accurate to determine many of the hadronproperties we wanted to know. In any case even theexpensive multi-layered calorimeters used by other cosmicray groups sampling the ionisation produced by hadronsnever achieved an energy determination of better than our20% until 1998, when the KASKADE collaboration inGermany estimated their accuracy as 10%. Flash tubes, anafterthought, were inserted in crossed layers. Their diametersmaller than that of the proportional counters improved thepath location of the hadrons to an accuracy better than 3cm.Thus we had excellent spatial resolution and coulddistinguish between single and bursts of particles. We hadconstructed a very fine instrument. When Nikolsky came tospend a term in Leeds he was impressed with the capabilityof our apparatus and resolved to incorporate some of ourdesign features in his array.

Unfortunately our computer developed a fault which we didnot identify until well after our first data had come in. Thisled to the appearance of what at first seemed a sensationaldiscovery, but which eventually resulted in a hugedisappointment. It also held up our work, crucially for me,because I was not far from retirement and did not have muchtime to lose. Our first objective was the measurement of thenumber of nuclear-active particles as a function of energy,the hadron energy spectrum. We presented these data at theEuropean cosmic ray conference in Paris in 1972. Toeverybody’s, including our own, surprise this spectrum didnot turn out to be smooth, but showed an irregularity, a

205

‘bump’, in an energy interval between 1012

- 1013

eV.Everyone in Paris was puzzled by this result and we wenthome to try and examine it further.It was not long after this that John Baruch came and told methat he thought he had found an explanation. If there existed

a particle of mass of about 40 GeV (= 4x1010

eV), then thiswould be reconcilable with creating a step in the spectrumsuch as we had ‘discovered’. I checked his calculations andagreed such could indeed be the explanation of what we hadfound, but added that it would not be the only explanationand that at this stage we could not exclude instrumentalerror. John became very excited, because the mass could bethat of the top quark, an elusive particle which theoryexpected to exist, but which up to that time nobody had asyet seen. The mass seemed reasonably in agreement withthat expected for such a particle, although we know todaythat the mass of this quark is about twice as large. Johnreminded me that a Russian group led by Khristiansen atMoscow State University had also seen an effect at aboutthis energy in the muon spectrum they had published. Iagreed that we should write up and publish our results suchas they were with the proviso that we were as yet not clearabout the significance of these data. We should mention theRussian work and the possibility that if confirmed thepresence of quarks at the energy we had identified could notbe excluded.

From then on events developed a momentum of their own.They would eventually detract me from my plans to enlargethe apparatus and carry out the complete programme I hadhad in mind when I designed the calorimeter. It wasimperative that we should first repeat the experiment andcheck every step of our investigation.Our group had suddenly become famous. John had been tosee the press officer of the university. The press officer sawour work as a golden opportunity to prove his usefulness and

206

arranged for a press release even before our results had beenpublished in Nature. Not surprisingly for me the release didnot mention the proviso in our paper submitted to Nature,namely that we ourselves were by no means certain that wehad sufficient evidence of a discovery of a new particle. Butthe cat was out of the bag. Television crews and camerasdescended upon us, we were interviewed by the media, and Iappeared on television and was asked to talk in seminars inmany universities. One useful by-product of this publicitywas that the main shower array at Haverah Park received apublicity it had never had before. British television screenshad a picture of the whole array, taken by helicopter, andviewers could follow the descent of its camera to near ourapparatus and finally see our quite interesting set-up.My own first television appearance was when I gave a paperat a Durham conference, held in honour of G D Rochester’sretirement in 1973. A galaxy of cosmic ray and nuclearphysicists attended. Sadly Powell whom I had kept informedof this experiment at its inception was no longer with us. ButJánossy had come from Budapest where he now held asenior professorship and Frisch from Cambridge. Both ofthem and many others showed interest in my work andwished me luck hoping I could confirm these exciting firstresults. I had of course made no secret of the fact that Imyself was as yet not convinced by them. The next step wasthe delivery of my paper at the International Cosmic RayConference in Denver in 1973. There, too, I found interest inmy work mixed with understandable scepticism, but alsoencouragement by the Moscow group making me hopefulthat I would be able to confirm the results at the earliestopportunity. In a sense we were unlucky in our seemingagreement with the Moscow university group’s findingswhich were very near the energy of our ‘bump’. We weretoo rash to assume that the agreement between the tworesults as regards the energy at which they were found wasmore than just a coincidence. The Russian lost belief in theirresults only years after.

207

Shortly after Phil Marsden, by then head of the Leedsphysics department, informed me that the department wouldpropose my elevation to a readership, often a first step to achair. Readerships in Leeds were bestowed as an honour onpeople whose research had achieved internationalrecognition. He informed me in his rather blunt way that hewould base his recommendation on my steady researcheffort throughout the years culminating in my latest‘success’ relating to the new particle. I was not very happyabout the line of the application. The new particle was by nomeans confirmed,. On the other hand I do not think that therewas much of a mention of my really important discovery,that of the phonon spectrum. I think no solid state expert hadbeen consulted in my peer review. Also the part I had playedin pushing for the Haverah Park project and in getting it offthe ground was, I think, not mentioned. Unfortunately, too,the importance of my paper with Towers about the spread ofextensive air showers was generally recognised only about15 years later. Cecil Powell was dead and his place as doyenof the British cosmic ray community had been taken byArnold Wolfendale of Durham. The department’s proposalwas supported by physicists in this country and abroad, butthe committee deciding on readership applications took theview that the existence of the particle was by no meansestablished. The application, based as it was largely on an asyet doubtful discovery, should fail. And it did.This disappointment did not prevent me from being busierthan ever. I had been asked to organise a course forgraduates on high energy interactions and to give a newcourse on optics. Here I did manage to include some lectureson lasers which interested me more, and consequently mystudents, than classical optics.The main effort of my research was now necessarily directedto going over the data obtained from our calorimeter step bystep and repeat our previous measurements. I had obtained asupplementary grant for this, as well as for additional

208

measurements to examine high-energy interactions and thenature of the nuclear-active component in the energy regionour apparatus was capable of exploring.Our tests confirmed that there was nothing wrong with anyof our detectors and that all their signals were correctlydelivered to the core matrix of our home-built computerwhich transformed the signals into a code suitable for ourrecording procedures. We now stripped the computer downto the matrix. There we discovered that two wires hadburned out. This had not prevented the computer fromworking, but had led to a mistake in encoding the signalsthat resulted in some of the incoming signals eventuallybeing either pushed up or down in energy terms. It thusexplained the ’bump’ in the spectrum we had at first seen.After repair of the matrix we obtained a smooth spectrumwithout irregularity. We had suggested that the name of ourparticle, if confirmed, should be the ‘Mandela’, and I believethat the bearer of this name, while still imprisoned, wasmade aware of it. When finally we had to retract, but theMoscow group still believed in their reported result in thesame energy region, the New Scientist reported that ‘theMandela lives in Russia’.

I remember three outstanding events at the next InternationalCosmic Ray Conference in Munich in 1975. The first,outstanding for me only, was when I had to report that ourhopes of detecting a new particle had been abandoned. Thesecond was a paper reporting evidence for the existence amonopole, a ‘particle’ whose existence had originally beensuggested by Dirac, but so far not discovered. Theimmediate excitement caused by this report resulted inpapers, written during the conference(!), that cast doubt onthe monopole paper. The discussion of the papers lasted farbeyond the allotted time while in the meantime F Reines waswaiting for ‘customers’ at the door of an empty smallconference room he had booked for a discussion of the thirdoutstanding paper which was to be given there after the main

209

meeting. This was his proposal of cosmic ray showerdetectors to be placed in Hawaii on a mountain cliff thatplunged vertically deep into the sea where more detectorswould be put at the sea bottom. The detectors would thenrespond to showers sampled at different levels and thusprovide exhaustive data on their development on their waydown, taking up an idea on which Leslie Hodson and I hadbeen keen on in the Manchester days. Reines’ project wasindeed begun some years later, but was abandoned recently.

At the end of the conference I had a short conversation at therailway station with Larry Jones of Ann Arbor, Michigan,who very generously consoled me after I had told him of mydisappointment over the aborted Mandela. He was convincedthat any experiment in physics was worth doing if it createdexcitement. Excitement we certainly had from the day wehad seen our raw data. Colleagues all over the world hadjoined in it, and I am still surprised by the speed with whichour infectious news had spread, and the many good willmessages from friends I received.

My other disappointment was that none of the groups whobuilt or continued to run large calorimeters had adopted myprincipal design features, apart from adopting some of ourimproved electronics. My design was capable of deliveringmore detailed information about the structure of the nuclear-active component than some of the large-area calorimetersthen in use. It had many novel features which were timesaving and because of its relatively low cost made thecalorimeter suitable for enlargement to many times its size.At the same time it was open to computational treatment,largely devised by Michael Hillas.

The false results we had obtained were not only a disaster inthemselves. They resulted in a waste of time which cost medearly. We had lost about three years in first ‘discovering’the particle and then checking and finally abandoning it. I

210

was within a few years of my retirement and just had time tocomplete the first stage of the work I had originally planned.Enlarging our apparatus by a factor 10 - 100, depending onfinance, would have enabled us to investigate hadrons with

energies higher than 1015

eV. I had contacted an Italiancosmic ray group in Torino which had shown an interest inmy work with a view to a possible collaboration and toplacing a large calorimeter at a high altitude location in theItalian Alps. As it was, after finally correcting themalfunction of our computer, I just had time to assemblesufficient statistics to analyse the data obtained within theenergy region covered by the calorimeter and publish theresults, some of them after my retirement. Our paper(Baruch, Brooke, Kellermann and Walster, J Phys 1979)reported our final measurements of the hadron spectrum.These were confirmed first by a Finnish group, led by MNieminen, in 1985. It is identical with the spectrum obtainedby the Karlsruhe ‘KASKADE’ group, led by Gerd Schatzpublished in 1998, 19 years after our publication. I think thatthey should have referred in detail to our paper in their list ofreferences, rather than just adding our data on their graphsand ascribing them to Baruch et al.It is now known that recent model calculations of hadronnumbers in showers disagree with the numbers they and wefound experimentally. Their calculated number in a showerdepends on the model used for the primary particles’interaction and on their mass. Alan Watson has pointed outthat the difference between the calculated and the measuredhadron numbers could be overcome by assuming a mass ofthe primary particle heavier than iron, but regards thisassumption as unjustified. I am not sure whether thecalculations made so far take into account fluctuations suchas must occur in the primary spectrum and in interactionmodels.

I reported experimental results touching on these problemsin two papers with Michael Hillas published after my

211

retirement. The first contained in the reports of the Parisconference in 1981 - and included in the rapporteur’ssummary - reported indications we had found of the possiblepresence of heavy nuclei in the cosmic radiation. The secondat the Rome conference in 1982 reported evidence of achange of interaction at the high end of my apparatus’energy range. I hope that the KASKADE collaboration willexamine whether their data contain evidence which coulddeal with the conclusions I reported at the time.

After 1982 my chance of a collaboration with Torino hadgone, but nearly 10 years afterwards Gianni Navarra wassuccessful in obtaining a grant for a large calorimeter. Ivisited him in 1993 when he had obtained his first data. Hehad a multi-layer calorimeter, but without the spatialresolution we had and other design features I had regarded asessential. Nevertheless I do hope that he, like theKASKADE group, will examine further the suggestions wemade in the two conference papers.One of the early results we had obtained was that at lowerenergies our data fitted in well with simulations carried outby Peter Grieder in Berne using interaction parametersestablished by the CERN accelerator in Geneva. Evidence ofa change of parameters at higher energies has recently beenconfirmed according to a communication to me by TsuneoMatano, a member of the Japanese-Bolivian collaborationworking until lately at high altitude at Chacaltaya, Bolivia.Interestingly, but not really surprisingly for me, thepublication (Phys Rev, 1996) emphasizes the difficultiesthey have in interpreting the data delivered by their highlysophisticated apparatus.

212

Chapter 21 - A Place for Religion

This book is not meant to be an autobiography, but wasplanned to give an account of the interactions which I hadwith politics, science and scientists. Nor is it meant to be anaccount of all my activities, personal and cultural, I have hadduring my life. Being a scientist, however, I should explainmy interest in religion.I have tried from my early days to find a symbiosis betweenmy scientific outlook and my consciousness of being a Jew. Istill remember the discussions I had with Dr Israel IMattuck, then rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Hespared time to listen to me when I attempted to clarify mythoughts and he unfailingly granted me access when Iwished to discuss with him my religious attitude. He offeredme more sympathy than I received at the World Congress forProgressive Judaism in Amsterdam in the 1950's from thehistorian Leon Roth. When speaking to him about mydifficulties in reconciling Judaism and science he brushedthem off as if I were one of his undergraduates, proclaiming:‘Read your (!) Pascal’. Although he had given the keynotelecture at the congress it seemed to me that he understoodneither the essence of Judaism nor Pascal’s ideas. I quiteunderstand that Pascal, a Catholic mathematician, does notfind a contradiction between his faith and his work. On thecontrary he finds great affinity between his religion andmathematics both of which derive logically fromfundamental beliefs or mathematical axioms. But it is quitewrong for Roth to infer from Pascal’s views a confirmationthat Judaism is necessarily compatible with science.

For me the main issues are the conflicts between science andthe idea of a personalized God and between science and theconcept that the Bible and the Talmud’s Halachah, its legal

213

prescriptions, are unalterably God given. Physics andCosmology as well as New-Darwinism are in conflict withformal religion, but the sciences, I think, neverthelesscontain an element of belief, just as religion does. Neithertherefore can disprove the other’s element of belief. We donot know the laws of physics that prevail in the first tinytime interval after the big bang, nor do we have asatisfactory explanation of the origin of the energies prior toit. As to Neo-Darwinism, if we adopt the idea that socialbehaviour is determined by the genetic build-up of membersof society we would still have to believe that the ethicalbehaviour of humanity is also predetermined by their geneticpast. There is no prior evidence for it and if we accept thisbelief we should have a conflict in accepting the doctrine offree will. Also if all our behaviour is predetermined andthere is no input from an Ethical Principle inspiring us towork for the improvement of mankind, it could equally bepossible that we are genetically programmed to annihilateourselves. There could even be some evidence for this. Wecould interpret the fact that we have been unable to detectsignals of life from other parts of the universe by assumingthat when a ‘civilisation’ of beings reaches a high level ofsophistication, these ‘beings’ have developed a technologyenabling and causing them to generate, say, nuclearexplosions that put an end to themselves and their world.The hope that this End can be avoided rests on our, or atleast my, belief that genetic progression is stimulatedthroughout by a high Moral Principle. This is my belief inGod: not a person, but the Ideal inspiring humanity. IfRichard Dawkins thinks that genes make their contributionto the statistics which eventually make up the causal web ofhuman behaviour, this is still a belief which, incidentally,makes no allowance for chaos. There is no proof for thisbelief. For me it makes no difference whether this Ideal iscalled God or a principle encoded by genetics. Nor do I thinka Neo-Darwinist would like the idea that the deus exmachina plans the destruction of humanity.

214

I personally believe there is evidence for a transcendentalIdeal to which mankind aspires. As far as the bible isconcerned hardly anybody really believes that the world wascreated in six days, but to mark the seventh day as day ofrest is a Divine idea. In fact I regard any idea whichcontributes to human harmony and ethical behaviour asDivine. In this way God is seen not as creator, but as a moralprinciple adopted by man as a standard, always present andalways demanding. Without this Moral Stimulus religionloses its appeal for me. I am glad to acknowledge that mythoughts here are very much influenced by my father’swritings and his teachings transmitted to me by my motherafter his early death in 1923. He thought that religion canonly be justified if it leads to an improvement of society. It isfor this reason that he gave absolute priority to the books ofthe Prophets who demand ethical behaviour and definemoral goals.

The discoveries of bible criticism in the nineteenth centuryhave laid open the human roots of the Great Book.Nevertheless much of what the Bible says, and especially theideas of the prophets, is certainly inspired. The moraldemands and values of the Bible are essential for the verysurvival of humanity. The prophetic idea of Z’dakah (socialjustice), for instance, is one of its eternal moral demands. Itis one of the many ideas that ensure a humanity based onethics. And no other humanity merits its name.On the other hand there is no reasonable foundation ofJewish orthodoxy’s edict that the Talmud, that great recordof rabbinical discussions, had to be regarded as a DivineCode and essentially complete, or the Halachah codified asGod’s Final Pronouncement. The legal prescriptions weresubject to the medieval rabbinate’s dictum with its demandthat a ‘fence’ should be created to protect all legalprescriptions. In fact some rabbis hold that the fence is moreimportant than the Torah itself.

215

For a scientist it is inconceivable that a deadline should begiven for concluding a set of religious prescription, and thatGod should not manifest Himself after the Middle Ages, northat a ‘fence’ created against detractors and false ideaswould not require changes with time. Such demands conflicteven with orthodoxy’s own belief in a living God.Progressive Jews see as denial of the eternity of the Divinespirit the claim that God showed Himself only when Bibleand Talmud were ‘finalised’, but never thereafter.We know that the closing of the Talmudic discussions andother codification were determined by the medievalrabbinate. These decisions were taken contemporaneouslywith Catholic thinking that religion needed to be protectedagainst heretics. In the Middle Ages it was defended againstthe new ideas of science and the nascent Enlightenment.Such defence reached one of its periodic climaxes whenGalileo personified the struggle between authority and freescientific enquiry.

Jewish orthodoxy argues that the Halachah, the fence aroundthe Bible created by Divine command, cannot be revised, yetalthough rejecting revision, it allows ‘interpretation’ by itsrabbinate. Such interpretations lead to compromises thatenable orthodox communities to live in some kind ofharmony with today’s world. They are often in conflict withscientific experience and lack true Divine authority. Theyalso quite often impair fundamental Jewish concepts. Therecent establishment of geographical zones, ‘Eruvs’, withinwhich certain sabbatical laws can be disregarded, is oneexample. Scientific experience also conflicts with theimmutability of the Jewish dietary laws. These wereprobably the best that could be devised at the time of theircodification, but they are no longer sufficiently strict toensure health. Unfortunately no provision for revising andimproving them would be compatible with a Jewishorthodoxy that accepts the authority of their rabbinate andthe finality of its rulings.

216

This highlights the fundamental difference betweenprogressive and Orthodox Judaism. Progressive Judaismtakes a different view of Authority. The progressive view ofcontinuous Revelation does not prohibit interaction betweenthe ideas expressed in the Bible and new ideas such asscientific discoveries that result from human developmentand experience. On the contrary, the Divine spirit revealsitself throughout history in its continual inspiration of newideas, in new discoveries and in human progress. Progressdepends on the pursuit of the prophetic ideas of old and therecognition of the value of new ideas and experiences. Thisis not another formulation of humanism or the inevitabilityof biological forces. The driving force in Judaism is itsethical demands for the Good Life which cannot be achievedwithout a struggle.Jewish religious feeling is not an immersion in dogmas. It isbased on individual and communal worship with its roots inJewish history and experience. It creates the link between theprayers of preceding generations and the world wideexistence of Jewish people everywhere. It is inspired by theWill to strive for progressive development ensuring anethical survival. I hold that the Progressive (Liberal andReform) Jewish view of Authority and the teaching based onit is the essential Judaism. Its insistence on the criterion ofethical demands and its openness to new ideas avoids theinconsistencies and contradictions within orthodoxy itselfand orthodoxy’s discord with scientific experience.Admittedly this is a matter of personal belief, but I feel freeand content to accept it.

Orthodox Jews regard Liberal and Reform Jews as a losttribe. All members of my family who are orthodox and nowlive in Israel refuse any contact with me because of myviews. I recognise that this orthodox attitude has beenadopted more in sorrow than in anger in the belief that onlystrict adherence to orthodoxy can guarantee the survival of

217

the Jewish people. I hold on the contrary that onlyprogressive Judaism is viable in the times to come. However,I agree that progressive ideas alone will not safeguard aJewish future and moreover that to be born a Jew is aninsufficient condition for being called a Jew. To be a Jew itis essential to have a Jewish education, to learn about Jewishhistory and Jewish thoughts within the frame of allaccessible knowledge. Thus Jewish parents are required togive their children a knowledge of the historical forceswhich have placed them into their family and to connect theJewish past with their future.

It is to stay in touch with Jewish thoughts and with theJewish community world wide that we go to the Synagogue.This proved to be a problem in Leeds with its tightly-nitOrthodox Jewish community. Records show that there havebeen Jews in Leeds since the eighteenth century, but themajority today are descendants of refugees from the Russianpogroms at the end of the nineteenth century. Intermarriagewith gentiles until the 1930's occurred relatively rarely, andthe second generation of the Jewish immigrants were onlyjust beginning to make an impact on the professions.Consequently Leeds Jews formed a close community withstrongly held Zionist views without much concern aboutreligious reform. The synagogues were all of various shadesof orthodoxy, except the tiny Sinai Synagogue, a Reformsynagogue founded in the 1940's by a German refugee rabbi,Dr Gerhard Graf who would soon move on to Cardiff.Soon after we had found a house in Leeds in 1951 we joinedthis synagogue. At that time it comprised about 70 familiesand its viability was uncertain. In the physics department Iwas fully occupied with building up a research group andcanvassing other physicists for support for a large air showerexperiment. Professionally this should have been the heightof my career and I should have concentrated on it fully.Instead I decided to devote time to strengthening thesynagogue. Our two girls, Judith and Barbara, were two and

218

3 years old, our boy, Clive, had just been born. Marcelle andI decided then that if there was little progressive Jewisheducation to be found in Leeds it was our duty to strengthenwhat there was.

I first became chairman of the synagogue’s fund raisingcommittee, then chairman of the building committee andfinally chairman of the synagogue. I made use of myexperience gained as physicist in writing memoranda andmaking grant applications. Two of my memoranda led tobreakthroughs in the development of our synagogue. First Irealised that for a Jewish community the availability of aburial ground facility would be as good a help in recruitingmembers as were spiritual attractions. Thus I wrote anapplication that resulted in a meeting with the City Council.The City appreciated that the orthodox Jewish communitywould not let us use their cemetery and granted us land for acemetery of our own. Also I had heard that it would bepossible to obtain money from a trust established by theGerman government, administered by Jewish trustees, inresponse to restitution claims for Jewish refugees. I thereforewrote an application to the trustees referring to the largenumber of former refugees from Germany who were amongour members and who wished to continue their traditionalform of worship. This resulted in a not negligible awardhelping us to commence building a new synagogue.We were fortunate in acquiring a leader, Henry Brandt, aformer officer in the Israeli navy, who had found his truevocation as a rabbi. He joined us first as a graduaterabbinical student and stayed with us when fully qualified toguide us through the synagogue’s early years. He personifiedthe rare combination of progressive ideas and the businessacumen of an orthodox rabbi. Thus within 8 years we had afull time rabbi, a new synagogue building, more than 200families as members and a religion school for the children, infact a growing progressive Jewish community.

219

Chapter 22 - British Science Quo

Vadis?

My retirement meant that I could spend more time workingfor reforms in science and higher education. Many of thesereforms had been envisaged in the post-war plans discussedduring the war in the British Association for theAdvancement of Science, by the AUT and other similarlyconcerned bodies. Then they were identified as necessary fora social and cultural advance of Britain. Now there wasadded the urgent need for ensuring Britain’s place, indeedsurvival, in an increasingly competitive commercial andindustrial world. This could not be accomplished withoutchanges in British education, a broadening of our sciencebase, nor without technological advances.Ever since being awarded a grant for my calorimeter projectI had spent most of my available time with my team on ourresearch and in the preparation of papers. What little time Ihad for science policy was spent as member of universitycommittees, as elected member of Senate and as committeemember of the local Association of University Teachers.When we moved to London after my retirement I resolved togive priority to working on such policies, but at first all myactivities were restricted by a period of ill health whichdelayed this work. I still kept up my interest in astrophysics,but restricted my involvement with it to keeping up as best Icould to following some of its progress in published papersand to attendance at some specialised conferences.

World War II had shown up the faults of our educationalsystem, when there was an insufficient number of personnelcapable of operating the hardware used in modern warfare,and special courses had to be run to train men and women inits use. In peace time progress in basic sciences and in

220

technology would have to be ensured by a consciousgovernment-led effort. We had to recognise that hankeringafter the ways followed by distinguished amateurs in thepast, by aristocrats like Lord Cavendish or successfulindustrialists like Joule in the 18th and 19th century, wouldin fact impede scientific progress. Vestiges of such attitudeswere still looked upon wistfully by the Treasury, whereasindustrialists looked hopefully to the government to fundwhat was needed for research and development. In any casemuch more was required than money alone, whether comingfrom the Treasury or from industry. What was needed was apurposeful direction for science and transfer mechanisms totechnology, and this the government had to oversee.Reforms were needed also of the British educational system.It was socially and educationally divisive. It could notdeliver the education to make many of the young benefitfrom higher education and prepare them for scientificcareers. Our universities had not delivered an adequatenumber of graduates for the war effort, now they could notdo so for Britain’s peace time economy. The country was notprepared for the new technologies which it needed to survivein the post-war world.Preparations would have to begin at the primary schoollevel. Not only were children from low income homesdisadvantaged, but primary schools still followed theteaching principles set up by Dewey which favoured theleisurely development of the young. There were no rigoroustargets, and the largest teachers’ union, the National Unionof Teachers (NUT), jealously guarded its principles ofsupporting the teacher-generalist. Publicly funded secondaryschools differed widely in their standards, and a strictselection system for children at the age of 11 enforced afterthe war prevented many suitable children who werehandicapped by their social background from progressingthrough secondary school to higher education.A fundamental flaw in English school education was itsneglect of the teaching of mathematics. The teaching of

221

mathematics in primary schools was mechanical. Even in1980 many children in primary schools were still taught thebasics of mathematics by teachers who had not gained eventhe lowest (O-level) qualification in their own secondaryschool education. To my knowledge there was no otheradvanced European country where this lack of qualificationof teachers was tolerated. This English educational attitudegiving low priority to mathematics and scientific enquiry inthe early school years was continued in the secondaryschool. Here pupils could ‘drop’ subjects like mathematicsbefore the age of fifteen or sixteen, a practice not permittedin advanced countries on the continent and frowned on inScotland. Inherent in the system was a split in the teachingof arts and sciences. This resulted in a barrier for many 18-year-olds to entry in higher and vocational education inscience and engineering, should they at this stage decide toembark on a scientific or technical career. Others, includingfuture civil servants, would lack the necessary discernment ifthey had not even a rudimentary knowledge of mathematicsand science subjects. On the continent students have to carrya wide variety of subjects to a much older age, whatevercareers they are aspiring to. They have the backgroundtraining in science required these days by most executives.The disadvantages of the mutual exclusion of arts andscience in our education most pronounced in England werefirst mooted by C P Snow. It is now understood that thecause of the English ‘two cultures’, as Snow called thisdichotomy, lies in the syllabus offered in secondary schoolswhich was designed to satisfy the entrance requirements ofthe ancient universities. Only recently have the universitiesbroadened their entrance requirements, finding to theirsurprise that with the new requirement their 3-year coursescan still deliver good, even better, degrees than before.I wrote several memoranda supporting changes in theeducation system which most farsighted experts in educationand industry also proposed and which would give a broadertraining to pupils. Such reforms proposed for A-level

222

examinations unfortunately became a subject of partypolitics and were opposed by the political right, supported byjournalists such as Melanie Phillips, and the political rightwas successful for a long time in halting progress. The lastattempt by the so-called Higginson committee to moderatethe early split between Arts and Sciences in proposingbroader school syllabuses in schools was made at the end ofthe 1980's. Although the proposals were agreed by mostexpert educationists and industrialists they were vetoed ‘atthe highest political level’, and could not be introducedbefore Mrs Thatcher had left office. It is only from thebeginning of the new millennium onwards, that a broadersyllabus, adding so called AS-courses in additional subjectscarried up to an intermediate stage, is available to 6th-formers. All the same the introduction of the AS-examinations has led to difficulties which still need to beironed out.Only a few years ago the Conservative administration beganto reform primary school education when a ‘NationalSyllabus’ was introduced. At the same time the nationalschool inspectorate was strengthened and schoolperformance tables were published. More far reachingschool reforms were introduced by the new Labourgovernment. However, the new funding available for schoolswas still meagre after three years of the new Labourgovernment, and it is doubtful whether new targets can beachieved in secondary education without more substantialfunds for schools and for teachers’ salaries.

Some reforms intending to improve higher education,technology and research and development (R&D) wereintroduced by successive governments after the war. TheWilson government spoke of the ‘White Heat’ of science andtechnology to be used for Britain’s economic survival andcreated a ‘new’ ministry of technology. However thisministry was a merger achieved by throwing together thewar-time Ministry of Aircraft Production and parts of the

223

war time Ministry of Supply as well as other wartimetechnical departments. It failed because the productionproblems were not assisted by government direction in thesame way in peacetime as they had been during the war,when the aims of industry and priorities were easier toidentify and when industrial research and development weredetermined by the demands of the war and therefore morefocused. Harold Wilson had intended to use ‘the white heatof technology’ as the driving force to revitalise Britain, butwith many other scientists I was disappointed when he failedto kindle it and deliver on his promise. He did not know howto set up the machinery to ignite this heat, nor did he makeavailable the necessary finances. Thus the creation of the‘Ministry of Technology’ without a clear definition of itsaims could not prepare the country for the new technologiesand eventually failed.The Ministry was soon disbanded and some industrial, butnotably not defence, R&D was assigned to the Departmentof Trade and Industry. The brief of the new department wasto look after existing industries, many of them in decline,and stimulate new technology, a tall order for civil servantswhich at that time had little political or expert technicalguidance.

Anthony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education in theWilson government elected in 1964, had attempted toimprove the status of the major British technical colleges byupgrading them to polytechnics status. He hoped that asadvanced technical institutions they would find a place ofequal esteem with universities as part of a ‘binary’ system,but it would take a long time to deliver this equality. In factit would take 30 years for the polytechnics to be made a newtype of technical universities, no longer under the control oflocal government. They are only now beginning to achievedistinction, most of them in individual technical andvocational fields, and a good number of them are in the

224

process of creating alliances with the older universities andother higher education establishments.

No further progress was made in education until after theMacmillan government (1959-63) had accepted therecommendations of the Robbins report of 1961 and foundednew universities. The over-all organisation of highereducation was very much left as it had always been. TheUniversity Grants Committee (UGC), a committee situatedin the Treasury was still overseeing the universities.Supposed to be ‘independent’ of the Treasury this was oneof the pretences supposedly ensuring the protection ofacademic freedom from financial government interference inhigher education. My prediction, so decried by Bernal andBlackett in Manchester ten years earlier, that the governmentwould have to play a much larger role in running highereducation was coming true as the Treasury increasedexpenditure for higher education. Now, although thegovernment would shrink from the day-to-day running ofuniversities, the UGC would soon ‘recommend’ closure ofsome university departments.The Macmillan government neglected higher technicaleducation so that Imperial College, the creation of PrinceAlbert, remained the only university in England offeringtechnological as well as basic science courses, apart perhapsfrom the budding Manchester Institute of Technology, whichat the time was still a faculty of Manchester University.

As to research and development (R&D) the Heathgovernment (1970-74) was uneasily aware that finance,organisation and the very aims of science and technologyneeded redefinition and guidance, which it hoped would beprovided by market criteria. It plumped for the so-calledRothschild report of 1971, because it liked its commercialjargon of the ‘customer-contractor’ principle which itthought could be applied to commissioning industrialinnovations. Yet it soon became obvious that apart from

225

defence technology the ‘Rothschild Principle’ failed in mostscientific and technological fields and was not applicable tobasic science at all.

The Conservative government that succeeded Labour in1979 paid lip service to supporting science, but introduced apolicy of ‘equal’, that is non-increasing, funding for the nexttwo or three years to be followed by cuts. In fact publicfunding for basic science suffered real cuts, because thecosts of science projects were increasing faster than theofficial inflation rate.The concern of educationists and scientists in 1980 was thatwe were far from achieving the aims to keep this country inthe forefront of higher education and basic research or inindustrial research and development. The optimismgenerated during the war and expressed in plans for scienceand higher education for post-war Britain had not deliveredthe desired reforms then proposed. In spite of tremendousbreakthroughs achieved in Britain in the basic sciences, theindustrial fruits of our discoveries continued to be harvestedby other countries. The various attempts by successivegovernments to ameliorate the situation in education hadbeen found insufficient.It remained imperative that reshaping our education systemhad to be continued, from its beginnings in primary schoolsright through to vocational training and higher education.There was no alternative, but for government and industry toadopt new attitudes and provide finance that would fosterdevelopment and innovation. Funding for basic science wasno less essential if the training and fulfilment of highlyqualified scientists and engineers had to be safeguarded.They would have to be offered career prospects in thiscountry so that they would not look to attractive positionsand funds for their research abroad. In essence governmentwould have to look upon science and technology as not justanother of its responsibilities, but as a vital part of thecountry’s infrastructure and to give it high priority.

226

The failure to adopt such policies meant that progress inscience and higher education was being stultified as long asthe Thatcher government continued with a policy of not onlyrestricting funds for science and higher education, but evendenying their inadequacy. Various lobbies then came intoexistence inside and outside parliament hoping to persuadethe government to change its policies.By 1980, when I joined several bodies which propagatedchanges in government science policy, the concern ofscientists and technologists had turned into near-despair ofthe threatening decline of our science and industries. A fewyears after, in 1986, Sir Keith Joseph, then the Secretary forEducation and Science published the Advice to hisDepartment of the research councils. It contained a warningthat given the limits set by the government there wereimportant scientific fields in which Britain would no longerbe able to maintain a presence. Probably because of thisplain language and the embarrassment caused to thegovernment, publication of the research councils’ adviceceased after 1986.

At almost the same time the 1986 report of the House ofLords Select Committee on Science and Technologyproduced evidence of serious under funding of civil R&D inmany fields and pointed to the low morale of the scientificcommunity caused by it. It blamed the government for thepoor state of British industrial innovation, but alsoapportioned blame to British industry.As to stimulating industrial R&D and devising new transfermechanisms to innovation the government was now involvedin a sterile argument with industry on whose job it was tosupport technological R&D. They seemed to agree only onone item, namely that neither could possibly ‘pick winners’in identifying worthwhile projects, thus finding excuses forthe government’s failing to finance and encourage privateindustry and for industry in turn to do their bit. Agovernment report in 1987 responded superficially to the

227

Lords Committee’s Report, but did not suggest a newprogramme of action or solutions to the main problems inBritish science as outlined by the Select Committee.What was particularly disturbing was that the strict financelimits set by the government provoked dissension betweenscientists. Some biologists, one of them well known for hispublications in his field as well in the field of the socialapplications of science, held that ‘Big Science’, e.g. mainlyexpensive research in astrophysics and high energy physics,should be cut in order to increase funds for the biologicalsciences.Some industrialists also begrudged any increase of fundingof higher education unless funds were used to directuniversities to engage on research useful to industry. Theyhad little in common with those farsighted industrialists whoinitiated the foundation of new colleges, such as theestablishment of Owens College in Manchester and collegesin Leeds and Liverpool as constituent parts of the VictoriaUniversity in the aftermath of the 1851 Exhibition. Some20th century industrialists I would meet on committees weremoaning about the large sums of public money that werealready being spent on the universities. It was uphill work toconvince these people, many of whom had great influencewith government, that a new impetus was needed tostrengthen this country’s higher educational system, and thatthis was in their own interest if they wanted to ensure Britishtechnological success and industrial competitiveness.

I became a member of the Fabian Committee for the Arts,Science and the Environment, as I thought the ‘science’ partin the committee’s title was being neglected. I also joined theLabour party’s group for finance and industry (LFIG) andbegan to write memoranda for both committees. Myinvolvement in science policy by writing and consultingcontinued throughout the rule of the Conservativegovernment until 1997. As a sideline I also acceptedgovernorships in two technical colleges in London.

228

I saw two objectives as paramount: first to publicise thedangerous state into which Science and Higher Educationhad been allowed to fall, and secondly to agitate forappropriate remedies for this worrying state of affairs. Thiswas not easy, because I soon found that there were notsufficient data available to achieve even the first of theseobjectives. Such data were vital, if one wanted to convincethe government of the seriousness of the situation in scienceand technology and prevent them from playing it down tojustify cuts in these fields. How much were we actuallyspending on civil science? How did this figure compare withthat of other countries? How good was our research base andhow could it be assessed? These figures were extremelydifficult to come by, because there was no one-to-onecorrespondence between the organisation of science andtechnology in this country and those abroad. Figuresemanating from the OECD at that time were more than twoyears late and made little allowance for the difference infinance procedures between European countries. Thesituation became further confused because the governmentproduced fanciful figures which seemed to support their casethat Britain’s expenditure matched that of other countries. Isucceeded in showing that these figures were too high. Yet atfirst the government refuted to accept a lower figure, whichother lobby groups quoted as well, let alone base any newinitiatives on it.

To make matters worse the government seemed swayed byinfluential right wing politicians who argued that the Britisheconomy could prosper quite well if service industriesreplaced manufacturing and thus obviated the need forpublic investment in technology. They pointed to theexample of Japan who had the reputation of advancing itstechnology by imitating and buying-in technology fromother countries which they alleged had been Japan’s recipefor gaining industrial advance. These views were shattered

229

when news emerged that the Japanese now fundedincreasingly original R&D. Japan had decided by then toembark on a large expansion of their own science base aswell as of its technology providing training for the top flightscientists and engineers it needed. Japan had realised that asolid science base was the foundation of up-to-datemanufacturing confounding the advocates of the ‘buying-in’of science.A new argument, namely that this country could survive byconcentrating on service rather than manufacturingindustries, was proposed by a circle of advisers surroundingSir Keith Joseph. This was going too far for the leaders ofour industries. The head of one of our greatest industrialundertakings stated openly that such views were simple-minded and that this country could not survive by peopletaking in one another’s washing.

Unfortunately retrogressive views had not been restricted tothe Conservative party alone. One of the lastpronouncements by the Education and Science Secretary ofState, Mrs Williams, before the demise of the Labourgovernment and the arrival of the Conservative governmentin 1979 outraged scientists by its philistine tone. Itcontrasted the large number of British Nobel Prize laureateswith Britain’s unsatisfactory performance in turningscientific advances made in Britain into industrial andcommercial successes. Her speech, intentional or not,encouraged the view that too much money was being spenton basic at the expense of commercially exploitable science.Mrs Williams’ pronouncement seemed to be the preamble ofher action when she cut the civil science budget by the thenappreciable sum of £6M. Although it had been the declaredpolicy of Labour to keep expenditure on science steady inline with inflation, Mrs Williams had the doubtful distinctionof authorising the first cut of science funds by a Labourgovernment since the war. One was reminded of the story ofthe enraged husband selling the couch on which he had

230

found his wife committing adultery, thereby failing to adoptproper remedies to deal with the situation. With subsequentcuts rather than increases of funds in the science base afterMrs Williams’ statement, no knowledgeable person wassurprised that in the years to follow the number of newBritish Nobel laureates shrank drastically, yet withoutcompensating progress in applied research and developmentor industrial innovation.

The Tory government elected in 1992 made further cuts inthe overall science budget. All the same it took severalinitiatives in response to increasing pressure that newmeasures were required to stimulate research, developmentand innovation. For instance it encouraged science parksnear universities and devised so-called LINK schemes thatstimulated cooperative ventures linking industry,government and universities. In addition it introducedearmarked postgraduate awards to people working inuniversities on research of interest to industry. The LINKinitiatives were slow to get off the ground. On the other handthe initiative of establishing ‘interdisciplinary’ centres inuniversities was more fruitful. In addition universities wereencouraged to undertake ‘market-orientated’ research. Yetlike Mrs Williams the Conservative government could notidentify major solutions for successful transfer mechanismsfrom basic discoveries to industrial innovation. It washed itshands of its responsibility for policies for such transfers andwould not establish the right priorities for building up atechnologically modern Britain.

Attempts by British governments to set up controlmechanisms for science had been only partially successful.For a long time there was no minister for science at all.When the name ‘Science’ was hung on to the Department ofEducation the science section in this Department consistedof a small number of civil servants only. The Department’sremit excluded much of university finance which was

231

controlled by the UGC, but included the budgets for theresearch councils. In my own dealings with the sciencesection of the Department I had found that it wasinsufficiently aware of science or technological researchfinanced or planned by other government departments, evenwhen the projects in other departments affected its ownprojects. It had no expertise in developing science policy andcould not advise its political head other than by occasionallypicking ideas from ad hoc panels. Also its structure wasmuddled. Anybody who ever sat on a committee of aresearch council, charged with peer reviews of scientificresearch projects, knows that such meetings invariablystarted with the civil servant, a member of the DES servicingthe committee of experts, announcing the total sum that wasavailable for all the projects under consideration. Few ifanybody on the committee knew who had been responsiblefor fixing the financial limits and on what grounds.The very creation by the government of the ‘Department ofEducation and Science’ (DES) was itself an illustration ofthe confusion in the minds of politicians and civil servants,many of them without an adequate appreciation orknowledge of science. I heard some ironic comments byFrench commentators who thought the juxtaposition ofScience and Education, symbolising a separation of sciencefrom education, was illogical, if not ridiculous.

Germany and France, on the other hand, had a betterorganisation of their science base. They were perceivingscience and technology as necessary parts of theinfrastructure essential for industry and commerce. They hadministers for science and technology who performedeffectively and controlled a budget which was publishedannually and open to inspection by their parliaments andpublic. It is almost unbelievable that for a long timesuccessive British governments maintained that suchministerial posts would not work in this country, in spite of acrying need for ministers not only to overview science and

232

technology, but to develop a ‘forward look’ to assess andevaluate innovation in new and important fields. Until thescience lobbyists became more expert there was not evenadequate data available on which to base decisions.Much of the resistance to creating the post of an overseeingminister was seated in government departments jealouslyguarding their independence and what they regarded as theirvested interests. Several Departments of State, e.g. Defenceor Environment or Agriculture and Food and others hadsome interest in, and a budget for, their R&D. They allwould have profited from useful interaction between theirown departmental R&D and that of other departments,supervised by a co-ordinating minister of science andtechnology.When on one occasion I showed Mrs Williams my articlepublished in the Fabian Review which advocated thecreation of the post of a Minister of Science with a brief toco-ordinate British science, she pushed it back to me shakingher head and saying that such ministry would never work.She would be proved wrong.

It became clear to me that in order to achieve my firstobjective, namely to give publicity to the dangerous state ofour science base, much work had to be done to findconvincing data to impress public opinion and thegovernment. As to the second objective what remedies couldone propose apart from asking for more money? A Ministerfor Science with an adequate brief could achieve thisobjective as well as devise adequate funding criteria. He orshe should be empowered to oversee our research base. Suchpolitical supervision was a first requirement to establishproper control mechanisms.When I first intended to write about these matters I had to domuch research to obtain adequate data and break down thefunding of British R&D into figures suitable for comparisonwith the scientific effort of other countries. Published OECDfigures were still lagging behind by several years, but there

233

were some academic teams occupied with research onscience policy, for instance the recently established SciencePolicy Research Unit at Sussex University (SPRU) whichwas funded initially by the then Science Research Council(SRC).

Until the 1990’s, there was no agreement between thescience lobby and the government on how the science budgetwas divided between the civil and the defence departments.Mrs Thatcher announced in Parliament that Britishexpenditure on civil science was 2.4% of the GrossDomestic Product (GDP). This would have been of the sameorder as the figure for France, except that her informationwas wrong. I could show that whether by accident or intentthis percentage quoted by the government compared the totalof British expenditure, for defence and civil R&D, with thatfor French and German civil R&D alone. Nor was itmentioned that at that time France’s GDP was about 20%larger than Britain’s. Such confusion, whether createdartificially by the government or not, was one of the factorscontributing to British science expenditure on R&D beingkept low compared to that of the larger nations until thepresent day.

In due course the work done by SPRU became more wideranging, more important. They not only collected data usefulto the science lobbyists, but they used existing, andestablished new, criteria to assess British science. Forinstance they examined information on the number ofpatents applied for in Western countries and found that thenumber of British patents had been overtaken by Germany.They looked at quotations of British and other’s papers inthe Science Quotation Index, and not just counted them, butcounted the number of times the papers were quoted byothers. They established convincing evidence that Britishexpenditure on science and technology lagged behind that ofGermany or France.

234

Still more detailed work on such comparative studies wasrequired, and this I undertook encouraged by LFIG, theLabour Finance and Industry Group. In one of the meetingsset up by a subcommittee of LFIG I had met again MauriceGoldsmith with whom I had not been in touch since 1944 inthe days of the Science Policy Committee meetings of theAssociation of Scientific Workers. Maurice was chairing themeeting and supported my suggestion that it would be usefulto examine science funding in this country and make somecomparative studies of policies in one or more Europeancountries.The book that emerged from our discussions was ‘UKScience Policy’, published by Longman in 1984, edited byMaurice. It contained an introduction by Sir Hermann Bondi.Nine of its essays were critical reviews and two werecomparative studies. In one of the essays I made a case forBig Science which would find the support of other scientistsin spite of some biologists’ reservations. Of the studiesdescribing policies on the continent I wrote the essay onFrance. Here I restricted myself to the progress science hadmade in France due to Mitterand’s change of the policies forscience of his immediate predecessors. I showed howMitterand had accepted, and acted upon, the representationsof the French scientific establishment that progress in Frenchscience was a desirable end in itself, but also that suchprogress was vital to France’s social and economic future.Subsequently I was asked by Longman to write a moredetailed book on Science and Technology in France with anadded chapter on Belgium. This book was published in 1988.It gives an account of the funding and organisation ofscience and technology in France, accurate up to 1987.I would single out here two other contributions to the bookon UK Science Policy, the first written by the expert ondefence R&D, Philip Gummett. He pointed to the poorpublic accountability of defence research policy in thiscountry and to the problem of the place of defence research

235

policy within a national policy for science and technology asa whole. He identifies the concern felt by the public andpoliticians across the party spectrum about the initiation ofdefence R&D, its direction and problems of duplication. Hewas concerned, too, about a number of problems that havenot been resolved to this day. He found that largeDepartments, especially the Ministry of Defence, running itsown research and development projects, had a minimum ofconsultation or mutually beneficial spin-off or ‘spin-in’ withthe Department of Trade and Industry. In spite of some latergovernment initiatives these questions still have to beanswered fully. They are part of the problem ofgovernmental R&D’s impact on industry, public researchestablishments and universities. Gummet’s article ends byasking whether, in terms of national science policy, defenceR&D is ‘too important to be left to the Ministry of Defence’.

Of the contributions dealing with civil research Clive Booth,who had worked in a high position in the DES, indicates thedifficulties in obtaining a balanced picture of science inhigher education. His article bears witness to the fluctuationsin support for research by the DES and to the oftencontradictory opinions on the value of research expressed inparliament and by the public. It also shows up the difficultyin ‘obtaining reliable figures of public money spent’ onresearch either as percentage of the national GDP or of theDefence or the Trade and Industry Department’sexpenditure. He mentions the ‘squeeze’ of research fundssince 1979 and the ‘frenzied’ attempts of government toachieve closer relations between universities and industry.

Maurice Goldsmith had after the war founded the British,later the International, Science Foundation. I think he ‘kneweverybody’ in British science and many distinguishedscientists abroad. He organised discussions on science policyattended by members of the Labour LFIG group as well asLabour members of parliament and many personalities in

236

British science and industry from outside LFIG. Amongthose that took part were the then Labour spokesman forscience and occasionally heads of some of the researchcouncils and ‘lay’ members of LFIG interested in sciencepolicy. The discussions we had, although quite informal,were most fruitful. Occasionally I would write up what hadbeen discussed and circulate it. Maurice and I regretted at thetime that John Smith, then opposition spokesman for tradeand industry, seemed less convinced of the importance ofgovernment support for basic science, than for an increase ofsupport for technology. Perhaps this was the way of apractical politician who guessed that it might be possible to‘sell’ to government and to a sceptical public the propositionthat support funds for ‘academic’ science would be morepalatable if it showed a return from which industry couldprofit. Maurice and I tried to set up a special meeting withhim to discuss science policy after he had become Leader ofthe Opposition, but this meeting never happened owing toJohn Smith’s untimely demise. His views at the time werestill shared by some Labour politicians, but fortunately thenew Blair government that came to power in 1997 took amore positive view of basic science. I venture to think thatthis was influenced by a good number of Labour politicianswho had attended our discussion meetings and had becomemembers of the new government. Yet in the meantime the1992 election confirmed the Conservative government inpower.

In our discussions LFIG had agreed that the problems ofoverall coordination of science and of transfer mechanismsneeded urgent solutions. We had agreed also on many otheritems, all parts of the problem of governmental R&D’simpact on industry, public research establishments anduniversities. These agreements, too, would bear fruit whenthe MPs who took part in our discussions found themselvesin positions of power.

237

We had agreed that the absence of effective oversight ofscience and technology had resulted in insufficient financialcontrol. It needed tightening and at the same timetransparency, because different ministries as well as theTreasury were in charge of many, sometimes overlapping,science budgets. We also discussed the misgivings of theBritish representatives who had to face fully briefed Frenchand German Science ministers at the European level. Thoseministers were in charge of their countries’ science, whereasour envoys were tied by Treasury instructions and notallowed any initiatives without first referring back toLondon.

We agreed that an efficient all-embracing governmentmachinery to oversee the pursuit of science and technologywas vital if further neglect of science and the consequentthreat to Britain’s industrial future was to be averted. Wespecifically agreed on the necessity to have a Minister ofScience with access to the Cabinet in charge of coordinatinggovernment policy on science and technology. The Ministershould facilitate cohesion between the R&D work ofrelevant government departments and should advise on abudget for Science which would be scrutinised byparliament. The need for a Minister of Science and otheritems of our agenda was taken up by Neil Kinnock, then theLeader of the Opposition, when he addressed the plenarymeeting of the International Science Foundation in London,just before the general election in 1992.In our discussions we never lost sight of the widerperspective, namely that science, basic and applied, is amulti-faceted human activity. We agreed that it is indeed thefoundation of the engineering sciences, the basis oftechnology and industry and hence of economic advance, butthat it is also part of general culture. We further agreed thatthe most advanced theories and practices of basic science arethe training grounds of the scientists and the engineers of the

238

future and that the flights of scientific fancy enrich thehuman spirit deserving of government support.

Before the election of 1992 the battle lines were clearlydrawn between science and government. There was ameeting in 1991 between some eminent scientists andgovernment ministers. SBS, the pressure group ‘Save BritishScience’, founded in 1986, produced figures showing thatuniquely among the leading nations Britain had muchreduced its support for research and development in theprevious five years. SBS quoted the House of Lords Reportsindicating the unsatisfactory state of British science andtechnology and referred to the resulting unease of Britishscientists and engineers. The meeting, however, took anextremely unpleasant turn. The ministers, far from beingpersuaded by the scientists’ case, refused to accept thefigures given to them, although many of these figures hadbeen culled from official publications, and denied thescientists’ conclusions. Indeed one of the ministers inattendance charged the scientists of submitting a subjectiveassessment, in other words faking the figures, and practicallyaccused them of High Treason by running down Britishscientific achievements and creating the image of acatastrophic future for Britain.

The feeling of the scientists after the meeting was more thandisappointment. They felt they had been treated unjustly,their good intentions arbitrarily misinterpreted and theirfigures, which they knew were correct, disputed on politicalgrounds. They felt humiliated. They could not believe thatsuch personal attacks, which at that time were commonlanguage used in Parliament by politicians in refuting factualarguments, could be directed against them, the highlymotivated scientists. Lesser mortals would see clearly thatthe government was preparing the grounds for the cuts in thescience budget it planned for November 1992.

239

The result of the 1992 election of another Conservativegovernment meant that all of us who had advised the Labourspokespersons for science feared that the blueprints forscience and technology we had prepared for Labour wouldbe designated as fit only for the waste paper basket.However, we did not stop the agitation for a better sciencepolicy which we knew was supported by increasing numbersof the scientific establishment and at last by the public atlarge. Other organisations set up science policy committeesand, like the Institute of Physics, began to publish news ofscience policy developments in this country and abroad.Contributions in this field continued to arrive from SPRUwhich had produced further data on Britain’s scientific andtechnological standing in the world. All of them showedBritain’s science and technology in relative decline. Moredata in the same vein had at last begun to come from theOECD also. More senior scientists were worried lest R&Dfor industrial innovation would be carried out to thedetriment of basic research. They put increasing emphasis onthe intrinsic value of basic science for training the highlyqualified scientists, engineers and technicians the countryneeded. Maurice Goldsmith and I thought that an extra effortwas required also to increase Labour’s awareness of theimportance of basic science to ensure Labour’s support forbasic science which at the time did not seem assured.

In spite of its electoral victory in 1992 the new Conservativegovernment could no longer resist the concerted attacks onTory policy for science and devised a scheme which wouldmollify the criticisms of the science lobby. A ‘Ministry ofPublic Service and Science’ under Mr William Waldegravewas created who invited interested parties to submit theirviews on the future of British science and technology.Waldegrave asked for submissions, promised to consultwidely and publish the Government’s conclusions in a WhitePaper. An ‘Office of Science and Technology’ (OFST) wasto be headed by a distinguished scientist, Professor Bill

240

Stewart, as Chief Scientist. He was to be given the status of aPermanent Civil Service Secretary with access to the ChiefScientists in other Departments. Thus the isolation ofindividual government Departments in scientific matterswould be broken down and policy for science, industry andR&D generally be devised in inter-departmentalconsultations.

One of the submissions to OFST was mine, advocating anew way to facilitate innovation and support of R&D. Itsingled out the government’s attitude, or rather excuse, thatsupport of new innovation was near-impossible, since itcould not ‘pick winners’ in assessing the importance ofinnovations. My proposal had been made before in variouspanels and I now submitted it to Professor Stewart. It madethe point that rather than ‘pick’ individual projects there wasa non-controversial way to identify whole fields by peer-review in which innovations were required. Within thesefields R&D projects could then be encouraged bygovernment and by industries, in collaboration withuniversities if suitable. I am glad to say that I received aresponse from OFST stating that the proposals made in mypaper were ‘particularly helpful in relation to foresight,manpower and funding supported by argument andevidence’. Although the phrasing of this remark was a bitobscure I took it as a welcome confirmation that one of thefew important outcomes of the resulting White Paper, theforesight exercise, can be attributed at least partly to mysubmission.

The White Paper, named ‘Realising our Potential’ (Cm2250, HMSO, London) was published soon after in May1993. It was not wholly disappointing for the scientists.There was a welcome change in the organisation of science,particularly the creation of OFST and the government’sacceptance of the ‘foresight’ panels which were to examinefields requiring innovation. Otherwise the White Paper

241

brought little change, and certainly no promise of increasedfunding. The organisational changes were welcomed bymany, but there were some major gaps and no meaningfulfigures. A special Research Council was created forastrophysics and high energy physics and commented uponas showing the government’s resolve to support the most‘basic’ (and the most expensive) fields of basic science, butsubject to the government’s overriding judgement of whatfinance the country could afford in the way of funding. TheChief Scientist in charge of science and technology would beplaced in the Cabinet Office. His Office would be ‘ring-fenced’ and would have an overview of science andtechnology in other government departments. This waswelcomed by us, but there was no indication of the powershe would have. In fact only months after publication of theWhite Paper the government changed its mind and placedthe Chief Scientist in the Department of Trade and Industry,arousing renewed suspicion that basic science was to besubordinated to industrial policies, but not a full partner infurthering innovation.

Maurice and I regretted that the term Science andTechnology Policy did not appear, thus neglecting linkagesboth within science and between science and social goals.We welcomed the White Paper’s implied assurance thatscience was not seen simply as a method of acquiringknowledge, but as a socio-cultural phenomenon of immensemagnitude. On the other hand Maurice was ‘saddened’ thatan opportunity to create a Humanities' Research Council hadnot been taken. I would have wished to see an explicitstatement recognising basic science as an essential part ofBritain’s infrastructure that included the training of thescientists and engineers the country so urgently needed.The foresight panels were duly established, and their reportsreceived, many of them by the new Labour government.However, after the reports of the foresight panels werereceived little action on them has been taken. Before

242

Labour’s advent in 1997 the Tory government had madefurther cuts in the science budget which Labour at firstperpetuated, but restoring many of them eventually by 1999.The overall running of the science and technology base isstill the remit of the Department of Trade and Industry.Labour at first appointed a minister for Industry and Science,but some time afterwards, and not too soon, changed itsmind. It separated the ministries, so that since 1999 there isnow a minister for industry and one for science implyingthereby, one hopes, that science was to be a full partner inthe planning of industrial policy.

In the summer of 1999 SBS published a report, supported byconvincing data, advocating that Britain’s expenditure onscience and technology ought to be doubled. In 2000, soonafter its second general Spending Review, the Labourgovernment published a new White Paper on Science andInnovation Policy. This encouraged the science community,and especially those of us who had worked prior to 1992 onplans for new policies, because it agreed with some of ourmain arguments. Improvements that followed the WhitePaper included new money for a Science Investment Fund,some extra money for large scientific projects, an increase ofstipends for postgraduate research students and increases insalaries for researchers. Yet even with these salariesscientists fare worse by 30-40 % than those in equivalentprofessions, and promising researchers are unlikely to betempted by them to return from the United States.Nevertheless the government expressed concern at losinghighly qualified scientists and has made available funds alsoto increase salaries for ‘top’ scientists. All these measuresmust be welcomed, especially as they are taken against abackground of a fiscal policy which so far has meant adecrease of money for public services, as proportion of GDP,since the Tory governments. One must welcome also as achange for the better the government’s attitude in increasingsupport for research and development at the European level

243

and its promise of tax concessions for firms in their R&Dexpenditure.

At the present time, in 2002, the government has largelyreversed the cuts made by the Tory government, but sciencehas not been given the same priority as the National HealthService or Transport or schools education. On the contrarysome cuts are again being made in the budgets of all but afew universities. Much more needs to be done, and theScience Lobby must remain vigilant.The most urgent reform now is needed in the field of HigherEducation. Better solutions will still have to be found tosupport undergraduate students. To ask for feesdisadvantages students from families in the lower incomeclasses. It either puts these students off entering highereducation, or forces them to take on outside work. TheBritish 3-year degree course is short enough and leaves littletime for non-degree work, even during the vacations. Exceptfor a few very talented students extra mural work will resultin poorer degree results.The government is enthusiastic about creating increasingaccess to higher education. It is only now beginning torealise that this cannot be achieved without making financeavailable for a large capital injection. Very recently theChancellor has announced that more finance for theuniversities will be forthcoming. Will it be enough to replaceobsolescent equipment and decaying buildings? And can itassure adequate salaries for academics, for their researchsupport staff and technicians?

244

Epilogue

After my retirement my research group broke up. GordonBrooke had to retire owing to poor health and John Baruchwent to Bradford University where one of his constructionswas a ‘robotic’ telescope, available to professional andamateur astronomers worldwide. I have seen reports that,irrepressible as ever, he has lately had the idea, and is incharge of the project, to assist lawyers with the help of newtechnology.

When I retired and we left for London the Leeds department,now called the School of Physics and Astronomy, wasundergoing a transformation. In 1968 Ian Ward had beenappointed professor and established a new and rapidlyexpanding group working on research in polymers. With thisappointment Leeds had responded to the government’s callon universities to undertake research of interest to, and ifpossible in collaboration with, industry. In Leeds suchcollaboration was facilitated by the proximity of ICI’slaboratory in Harrogate near Leeds. The scientific output ofthe polymer group grew fast in volume and in importance.Hence when about ten years later the government supportedthe establishment of interdisciplinary centres where a fieldwould be researched using various academic andtechnological disciplines, it seemed natural that Leeds wouldbecome the British interdisciplinary centre for polymers.At the same time Condensed Matter research continuedvigorously both by theory and experiment. During AlanWatson’s chairmanship of the department the research effortof the physics and astronomy department would grow andcosmic ray research would be extended to include cosmicgamma rays. Here Michael Hillas had begun a collaborationearlier with a Dublin group at first led by N A Porter, whichby now has expanded into a set of experiments based at the

245

high-altitude Whipple Laboratory in Arizona led by TrevorWeekes, formerly of Dublin.The Haverah Park Air Shower experiment was shut down in1987, and for about ten years Alan Watson was involved inother cosmic ray work including gamma-ray experiments atthe South Pole. Also from 1991 onwards he began planningwith J W Cronin and soon with other groups worldwide theAuger experiment now taking shape in the Argentine. Thetime scale of large cosmic ray experiments is of interest: Ithas taken about 10 years from the planning stage to seeingthe first parts of the apparatus operating, a time scale of thesame order of magnitude as the time taken from the planningstage to the start of space or accelerator experiments.Physicists from universities in Australia, Japan, Russia andthe USA now beginning work on further air shower arrayshave accepted such time spans as reasonable.

At the civic level, testifying to the regional development inBritain, the City of Leeds, too, has progressed, and to nosmall extent due to the achievements of Leeds University.When I first came to Leeds the city was known principallythrough its clothing industry, its wool and textile researchand its connection with the Bradford wool trade, althougheven then it was home to 70 different engineeringenterprises. Many of these have expanded, and Leeds hasalso developed as a centre of banking and insurance.Leeds University has developed from a middlesizedestablishment, emphasizing a preponderance of itstechnological departments, to a university of world standardwith achievements in its many departments in the arts andsciences. The polytechnic has become the LeedsMetropolitan University. Opera North is based in Leeds andhas added to its reputation as a centre of music. Funds fromthe former West Riding county and the City of Leeds, bothat the time run by Labour administrations, and strongsupport from members of the University, have created a newtheatre. The Leeds art college has gone from strength to

246

strength. All of these continue to make their contribution toYorkshire cultural life. The City Fathers in their Town Hallhave achieved much and promise to do more.

247

Acknowledgements and another CV

I am very glad to acknowledge my indebtedness to ProfessorGeoffrey Cantor, of the University of Leeds, whoencouraged me to write this book and to Dr Jeff Hughes ofManchester University for his critical comments and for hismany suggestions. I am indebted, too, to Professor AlanWatson, FRS, for his comments. I thank Rabbi David JGoldberg of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue for pointing outsome historical inaccuracies in my first draft.

I have written these notes because I think they are of somehistorical interest and therefore have given me somethinguseful to do even at my age. In this my wife’s example hasinspired and aided me. Her curriculum vitae, however,contains a lesson that in spite of the many prominent andapparently successful couples one sees today in public life,professional women are still very much handicapped by thedemands of marriage and family especially when neitherpartner is in a very high income class.

Marcelle’s ambitious father put her on skates when he sawshe had some talent and could perhaps emulate the career ofthe most famous women skaters. She succeeded in becomingamateur champion of France in pair ice dancing. But she wasnot happy neglecting her education and insisted on passingher university entrance examination. He then persuaded herto study chemistry and not follow a career in music in spiteof her promise as a budding pianist. At the University ofStrasbourg, evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand during the war,she worked as laboratory assistant to the professor of organicchemistry while still an undergraduate until she joined theFrench Resistance for which she was awarded a medal afterthe war.

248

After the war she had been working as personal assistant toher father in his business when she met and married me andspent the next years in raising her family of two girls andone boy.She was not content with being a housewife, since she hadfinally recognised her true vocation as a student of literature.She completed an external arts degree with the University ofLille when the children were still young, then gained herBritish Diploma of Education and was appointed to teachFrench and German in a girls’ high school. After two years afarsighted Chief Education Officer of Leeds picked her toconduct her now historic experiments, funded by theNuffield Foundation, in language teaching in primaryschools. This led to the publication by her of several reportsand two books on language teaching, a fellowship of theInstitute of Linguists and the position of Senior Languageadviser, first in the then West Riding, and later with theLeeds Education Authority and to consultancies to a numberof national committees on language teaching. For herlanguage work she was awarded the order of ‘PalmesAcadémiques’ by the French government.She also showed extraordinary ability as an administratorwhen in the West Riding of Yorkshire, then a large countywith more than a thousand schools spread over a wide area.Here she created, staffed and administrated language centresfor teachers and students in Further Education and organised,or re-organised, language teaching in the West Riding.While I tried to support her in her domestic work and insafeguarding family life when she was building up her newcareer I failed her when she had the chance of taking up avery senior appointment in London. She decided to stay inLeeds, rejecting a life which at best would have meantcommuting during weekends. Her decision was a veryfamiliar one for professional wives. I am aware of a goodnumber of my colleagues’ wives who, brilliant themselves,have put achieving a successful marriage and a balancedfamily life before crowning their careers. She retired ‘early’

249

when I retired, but then embarked on a new career as awriter.

I have outlined her achievements because I want to show myadmiration for her courage and my gratitude for setting mean example.

250

GLOSSARY� – particle: The nucleus of the Helium atom

consisting of two protons and twoneutrons, Emitted from someradioactive substances.

� – decay: Decay of radioactive element byemission of an � particle

Accelerator: Device built to accelerate nuclearparticles to very high speeds, builte.g. in CERN, the European Centrefor Nuclear Research

Bohr RutherfordModel: The model of the atom consisting of

a nucleus and electron shells asproposed by Bohr and Rutherford.

Counters,Geiger: Causing a signal on the passage of

an electrically charged particle.Proportional: Causing a signal corresponding to

the ionisation (total charges) in acounter.

�erenkov: Yielding a light flash due to aparticle of relativistic velocitycrossing the counter

CERN: Centre Europ�en de RechercheNucl�aire. The Europeancollaboration near Geneva

Crystal Lattice Configuration of atoms, ions ormolecules in a crystal

DSIR Department of Scientific andIndustrial Research, forerunner ofpresent day's Research Councils

Electrophoresis: Transport of a charged particlesubject to an electric force in aliquid or gel

Eigenvalue: Characteristic value of a quantumstate

251

Electronvolt (eV) Unit of energy. 1 million eV=106 eV.

103 MeV = 1 GeVFlashtubes Thin tubes producing a light flash

on the passage of a particleFly's eye Assembly of large number of

photomulipliers, all pointing indifferent directions like the parts ofa real fly's eye

Gedankenexperiment: Translation : Thought Experiment.Term used by Einstein to describean imagined, but not actually carriedout experiment

Hadrons 'Nuclear-active particles', stronglyinteracting particles

Hz (Hertz) Unit of vibration, 1Hz =1 cycle/secICI Imperial Chemical IndustriesKASKADE Collaborative experiment in

Karlsruhe, Germany, examininghadrons and other parameters ofcosmic ray air showers

LegendrePolynomials Polynomials satisfying Legendre's

equationMonochromator Assembly of prisms capable of

analysing an optical spectrumMonte CarloSimulation Computer simulation allowing for

statistical distribution of inputparameters

Muon Weakly interacting particle withdecay time of order of microseconds(10-6 sec)

Nanoseconds 1 nanosec = 10-9 sec = 1 thousandthof a microsecond

Nuclear Force Force (interaction) between nuclearparticles

252

Nucleons protons and neutrons making up theatomic nucleus

Numerus Clausus (Lit Transl: Closed Number)Demand by Nazis to restrict theadmission of Jews in the universitiesor professions

Parsec 1 parsec= 326 light-years = 30.857 x

1012

( million million) kmPhotomultiplier Device transforming small light

flashes (e.g. scintillations) intoelectrical signals

Pion Strongly interacting particle withdecay time about a hundredth of thatof the muon

Positivism Philosophical system basedexclusively on empirical data

Pulsar A neutron star, remnant of amassive star after a supernovaexplosion

Quasars Now also called QSOs ( for Quasi-Stellar Objects): cores of very activegalaxies

Radon Radioactive gas emanating fromRadium

Relativistic (Particle) Particles moving with velocitiesnear that of light

Sidereal Effect Variation in sidereal timedistribution of cosmic rays pointingto an anisotropy in arrival direction

Simulation Computer program simulating a realor proposed system

Steradian Unit of solid angleSynchrotron Accelerator (either man-constructed

or occurring in space) movimgrelativistic particles in orbits orspirals in magnetic fields.

253

Radiation Radiation emitted in the synchrotronprocess

Supernova Collapse of a massive star

254

About the Author

The author has had a distinguished academic career, teachingand researching in the universities of Edinburgh,Southampton, Manchester and Leeds, in all of which he wasin close touch with leading physicists of our generation. Heand his wife have now `retired' to London, spending theirtime reading and writing. Their children and grandchildrenall live in London.

Nazi politics prevented the author from studying physics inBerlin. At Vienna University he found endemicantisemitism, but also new friends and support. In Britain hebecame a graduate student of Nobel prize winner Max Bornwhich gave him deeper insights in the genesis of the newquantum theory and allowed him to achieve a breakthroughin solid state physics. He reports his discussions of politics inthe pre-World-War II atmosphere with his friends inEdinburgh which included the later `atom spy' Klaus Fuchs.

The British policy of internment landed the author in a campin Canada and surprisingly schooled him in activedemocratic politics. After his priority release he found nodespondency in bombed Britain, but eagerness to plan for abetter post-war world.

After the war the author worked in physics on cosmic rayshowers which are generated by particles of energy of up tomore than a billion billion electron volts. They are clues tothe origin and structure of our astrophysical world.

In politics he took part in designing plans for science andhigher education, especially during the 1970's and 1980's,opposing the lethargy and neglect of the then governments inthese fields. There are some shrewd remarks about the stateof British education at that time.