D-Day Forecast Fictionalized from the Leading Authority of the Day, the Difficult Genius Wallace Ryman

NATURE|Vol 460|13 August 2009 OPINION

the stability and collapse of sand piles, with a genuine mystery. In 1922, the and the forensic study of sand to solve discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in murders. This leads to a discussion Egypt yielded a famous necklace with of the weird and wonderful micro- a scarab beetle carved from a glowing, scopic life forms — such as rotifers, yellow-green, gem-like material, which tardigrades, gastrotrichs, turbellarians its discoverer Howard Carter did not and others — that have evolved to recognize. In the 1990s, the material flourish in the spaces between shifting, was shown to be a unique silica glass, abrasive sand grains. Such an environ- 28 million years old and 98% pure, ment may become the last refuge for from a particular part of the Libyan life in the event of catastrophic climate desert.

PHOTO SCALA, FLORENCE/EGYPTIAN MUS., CAIRO FLORENCE/EGYPTIAN SCALA, PHOTO change. Welland then addresses sand Welland travels to this desolate spot on a progressively larger scale: along and cherishes the glassy samples he the course of meandering rivers, in the finds glittering on the dunes. But, he formation of beaches, in deserts and muses, what could have produced heat mid-ocean sandbanks, in the forma- that was intense enough to fuse silica? tion of Old Red Sandstone rocks found A strike from a meteorite or lightning extensively from the Arctic to the Gulf can be ruled out because of the lack of Mexico and, finally, in sand found of visible impact craters or hollow beyond Earth. fulgurite tubes, respectively. He spec- Welland asks how sand grains have ulates that the cause might have been helped humans to conceive the Uni- an air burst from the impact of an verse and the infinite. He begins with asteroid with the atmosphere, similar Archimedes who, in the third century to that at Tunguska in Siberia, Russia, bc, calculated that 1063 grains of sand in 1908. would fill the Universe to the outermost Green desert glass from Libya was carved into a scarab beetle for With irresistible ideas such as this, sphere of the fixed stars. The author also Tutankhamun’s necklace — but how did the silica glass form? Welland provides an appealing blend discusses, and attractively illustrates, of science and the imagination, worthy how sand has been used artistically in many of Technology in Cambridge. One fascinating of the famous vision of the poet William Blake: cultures — from sand painting by Australian photograph shows the ‘Earthquake Rose’, the “To see a world in a grain of sand”. ■ aboriginal communities and the North Ameri- pattern made by a desktop toy, a sand-tracing Andrew Robinson is the author of Earthshock and can Navajo, to Zen sand gardens in Japan and pendulum, during a strong earthquake in The Story of Measurement. He is a visiting fellow of the sand sculptures created by digital methods Washington state in 2001. Wolfson College, Cambridge CB3 9BB, UK. at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute A personal epilogue provides the reader e-mail: [email protected]

The story begins with Meadows being sent to rural Scotland to glean clues about forecasting D-Day forecast fictionalized from the leading authority of the day, the difficult genius Wallace Ryman. Ryman is a Turbulence of time that stretches today’s forecasting fictionalized version of Lewis Fry Richardson, by Giles Foden techniques to their limit, and which was known for his work on fractal coastlines, who Faber and Faber: 2009. 368 pp. £16.99 beyond the capability of meteorologists in Foden rightly calls “one of the unsung heroes 1944. Add to that the need for a low tide to of British science”. Like Richardson, Ryman is evade the German sea defences, the task con- a Quaker whose experiences in the Friends’ Fluid dynamics and weather prediction seem fronting the Allies’ weather experts seemed Ambulance Unit during the First World War unpromising material for a gripping story. insurmountable. convinced him that war must be avoided. But Giles Foden has ingeniously dramatized In Turbulence, Foden tells this story through He shuns collaboration with the military, so what is perhaps the most important weather the eyes of a fictional character, Henry Meadows must pursue his mission by stealth forecast ever made: that for the D-Day land- Meadows, a young academic attached to the — an attempt that he mostly bungles. ings, the invasion of continental Europe at forecasting team that is led, as it was in reality, In Scotland, Meadows runs into the second Normandy by the Allied forces towards the by the British meteorologist James Stagg. The wayward genius in the book, this time without end of the Second World War. The result is decision-making process of Stagg and his frac- a pseudonymous disguise: Geoffrey Pyke, the a compelling tale, with meteorologists as the tious colleagues, including the brash American man behind the Habbakuk project to build air- unlikely heroes and the turbulence of the title entrepreneur Irving Krick and the arrogant but craft carriers out of ice reinforced with wood providing the central metaphor. astute Norwegian Sverre Petterssen, occupies pulp. This ‘Pykrete’ is extraordinarily resistant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in com- the last third of the book. Stagg and Petterssen to impacts and melting. Also making a fleeting mand of the operation, had to be sure that the each published their own accounts in the appearance is Julius Brecher, a doppelgänger crossing of the English Channel would not 1970s. Although Foden’s tale is steeped in for biochemist Max Perutz, who assisted Pyke be disrupted by bad weather. And he needed that history, he allows Meadows to make the during the war. This part of the plot would seem that assurance five days in advance — a length crucial, unrecognized contribution. far-fetched if you didn’t know that it is true.

Yet the Habbakuk story, however But Foden has a motive in shaping entertaining, seems tacked on. It is not Meadows this way, using him to capture central to the plot even though it supplies a sense of the dour, buttoned-up character a framing device: Meadows recounts his of wartime Britain. And unlike so many wartime exploits while on board an ice fictional scientists, Meadows is believ- ship built in 1980 for an Arab sheikh. able: his discourses on turbulence and When Meadows joins Pyke in wartime hydrodynamics are assured, even uncom- London only to see the Habbakuk project promising, without the breezy ‘beginner’s terminated, it feels like a cul-de-sac. guide’ flavour that is the usual hallmark of One could carp at a few other points of undigested authorial research. Here Foden ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS/MARY EVANS NEWS/MARY LONDON ILLUSTRATED creaky plotting or narrative, but that had the immense benefit of advice from seems churlish given how splendidly the Secret wartime plans included building giant ships from ice. his father-in-law, Julian Hunt, a leading book animates a buried story of scientific expert on turbulence and meteorology and, endeavour and triumph. Meadows’s fixation on his research and his fittingly, a recipient of the Lewis Fry Richard- One must also ask whether the author social awkwardness could make him a cari- son medal for nonlinear geophysics. Skilfully succeeds in creating scientists who are fully cature of the diffident scientist. Brecher also balancing fact and fiction, Turbulence is fleshed individuals. Foden complicates his task refracts everything through the prism of his dramatic, intelligent and convincing. ■ by making Meadows callow and withdrawn own research topic of blood, while Ryman is Philip Ball is a freelance writer. His most recent as a result of a childhood trauma in Africa. the crabby boffin and Pyke the dotty one. books form a trilogy called Nature’s Patterns.

bearded bulls, a motif from distant Mesopota- Bling of the Bactrians mia. The third-century-bc Greek-style city of Aï Khanum, founded after Bactria’s conquest Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the and archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert, who was by Alexander the Great, yielded two sophis- National Museum, Kabul invited by the Afghans in 2003 to catalogue ticated sundials: one, carved from limestone Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York the crates when they were rediscovered. “Every in the form of a throne balanced on two lions’ Until 20 September time we opened a box, it was like a miracle.” legs, was designed for Aï Khanum’s latitude; Along with the Tillya Tepe gold, the guards the other, a unique cylindrical design, was had concealed nearly all of the treasures from calibrated for ancient Syene (Aswan) in Egypt. Desire for gold has driven people out of their Kabul’s museum. Another mechanical marvel comes from homes and out of their minds. So Soviet The exhibition displays artefacts from Begram, a city on the Silk Road that thrived archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi cannot have four archaeological sites, each focusing on a in the first and second centuries ad. A green been surprised when a crowd gathered to major stage or civilization in Afghanistan’s bronze basin is filled with sinuous metal fish, gawk at a mound he was excavating in north- history. They reveal the multiple influences their moveable fins and tails wired to small ern Afghanistan in 1978. Tillya Tepe, the Hill of the Roman, Indian, Greek and Chinese weights that would make them ‘swim’ when of Gold, dates to the first century ad, when cultures that infiltrated the ancient nation. A the bowl was filled with water. the land was known as Bactria, and contained second-millennium gold bowl unearthed at But the gold of Tillya Tepe is the most allur- the graves of six nomads — a chieftain and the Bronze Age settlement of Tepe Fullol in ing. Its pastoralist owners ploughed their profits five women — buried with more than 20,000 the northeast of the country is decorated with from sheep- and goat-herding into shimmer- golden and bejewelled belongings, ing trophies ornamented with sym- some of which are now on show at bols of diverse cultures: Aphrodite the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an Indian dot on her fore- in New York. head, a dagger handle topped with Sarianidi sent the treasures to a Siberian bear, Chinese-style boot the National Museum in Kabul and buckles, Roman coins, resplend- returned to Moscow. Then came ent gold jewellery and a folding MUSÉE GUIMET/T. OLLIVIER MUSÉE GUIMET/T. the wars. The Soviet army invaded gold crown composed of five ‘trees’ Afghanistan in 1979, the National adorned with rosettes and birds. Museum was nearly destroyed by That such valuables survived “is an shelling in 1994, and in 2001 it amazing testament to the Afghans’ was ransacked by the Taliban. Yet ability to keep a secret”, Hiebert says. museum guards had hidden the “The Communists came through, treasures in secret vaults in the the mujahedin came through, the presidential palace and kept their Taliban came through, and these location secret for some 25 years. poor underpaid museum people Afghanistan portrays the tre- didn’t tell them, ever. I want to tell mendous challenges of preserving a that story to my children.” ■ country’s heritage in the face of war. Josie Glausiusz is a writer based in “All of these artefacts were supposed New York. to have been lost,” says curator Museum staff hid this folding gold crown from Afghanistan’s looters for years. e-mail: [email protected]