OPINION TWO CULTURES NATURE|Vol 459|7 May 2009 Snow’s portrait of science in politics Charles Percy Snow ignited controversy around science and in Germany. Snow homes in on two men, both scientists. One is policy-making in a series of lectures at Harvard University a year after the chemist Henry Tizard — rector of Imperial College, London, his ‘Two Cultures’ debate. Below we reproduce an extract from the and chairman of an influential committee that advised the Labour resulting book, Science and Government. It gives a remarkable insight government to invest in radar technology. The other is Tizard’s into how science feeds into political decision-making. one-time friend and later rival, Frederick Lindemann, a close adviser Snow was one of Britain’s leading science civil servants. He to Winston Churchill, who was then part of the Conservative capitalized on his experience at the heart of the government opposition. machinery to analyse the role of science and scientists in the United Such an account could have been dry and factual, but this is not Kingdom during the Second World War. He wanted to disentangle how what we get from Snow’s pen. Instead, his readers are treated to political decisions were made during the war and, importantly, how a page-turner. Snow the novelist is not afraid to tell us what his scientific advice was used to make them. characters might be thinking. He is indiscreet about their personal In the extract, Snow gives a colourful account of the decision to lives, social connections and professional backgrounds. He guesses invest in the development of radar — an unproven technology in the their motives and provides his own verdict on their judgements. mid-1930s that would prove to be key to the success of the allied war Snow was attacked for not being detached enough in his analysis. effort. Yet the book’s accessibility ensured it was widely read. Five decades In the years leading up to the war, the British government did not later, Science and Government remains a rare inside view of the know how to handle the rise of Adolf Hitler and his military build-up relationship between science and political authority. Joanne Baker Extract from important to start with. No Science and Government one took much notice when its by C. P. Snow membership was announced. Harvard University Press: 1961. There may have been slight curiosity about the appoint- ment, which was entirely due to In 1934 both Tizard and Lindemann Wimperis,2 of Tizard as chair- were nearly fifty. Of the two, Tizard man. The appointment would had been by a long way the more not and could not have happened, successful, though even he, judged though, if Tizard had not been so by the standard he set himself, had well connected in official life. not lived up to his promise. He was Well, that committee was called ARCHIVE/GETTY CENTRAL PRESS/HULTON GETTY; a trusted man of affairs, he had been the Tizard Committee almost from OTO/ knighted, he was head of a univer- its first meeting. It is slightly touch- sity institution, but in his own eyes ing that in his diary Tizard, who he had not done much. could not use that title, never seems POPPERF As for Lindemann, he had done to have been quite certain what its much less. The professional physicists official title really was. did not take him seriously as a scien- Frederick Lindemann (right) vehemently disagreed with Henry Tizard From the first meeting on Janu- tist, and dismissed him as a cranky (left) over the development of radar as Britain’s method of air defence. ary 28th, 1935 he gripped the prob- society pet. Scientifically his name lems. This was the job for which was worth little. He was the intimate friend were beating round for some sort of defence. he was born. Quite soon, by the summer of of [Churchill] a politician whose name was There was nothing accidental about this. It was that year, small ripples of confidence oozed scarcely worth as much. predictable that England, more vulnerable to under the secret doors and penetrated White- Then, quite suddenly, Tizard was given the air attack than any major country, would spend hall, almost the only ripples of confidence that chance for which he was made. England was more effort trying to keep bombers off. But touched the official world during those years. strategically in a desperately vulnerable posi- there was something accidental and unpredict- Tizard insisted on a very small committee tion, for reasons — the tiny size of the coun- able in Tizard being given his head. which he chose himself. Wimperis had to be try, the density of the population — which The Air Ministry, under the influence of there, Rowe was brought in as secretary, but apply more harshly today. In 1934 [Stanley] their scientific adviser, H. E. Wimperis, him- at the beginning there were only two mem- Baldwin was the main figure in the govern- self prodded by a bright young government bers of independent standing, A. V. Hill and ment, and it was only two years since he had scientist called A. P. Rowe,1 set up a Committee P. M. S. Blackett. Both of these were eminent said lugubriously: “The bomber will always for the Scientific Study of Air Defence. Its scientists, of a quite different order of accom- get through.” terms of reference were as flat as usual: “To plishment from Tizard or Lindemann. Hill In public, rebellious politicians like Church- consider how far advances in scientific and was one of the most distinguished physiolo- ill were attacking the whole of the government’s technical knowledge can be used to strengthen gists in the world and had won a Nobel prize defence policy. In secret, the government sci- the present methods of defence against hos- in 1922. Blackett, who was only thirty-seven entists, the military staffs, the high officials, tile aircraft.” The committee was nothing very at this time, was one of [Ernest] Rutherford’s 36 © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NATURE|Vol 459|7 May 2009 TWO CULTURES OPINION most brilliant pupils, and later himself won a virtue as an interpreter between the two sides. important decisions were in effect taken. By Nobel prize.3 … “I utterly refuse to wear a busby,” he used to the end of 1936 most of those decisions were The committee made up its mind about say. Fairly soon he had not only got radar translated into action. It was one of the most [radar] before the device really existed. Watson stations in principle accepted and hoped for, effective small committees in history. But Watt, who was the pioneer of radar in England, but also succeeded, with the help of Blackett’s before it clinched its choices, there was a most … , had done some preliminary experiments. exceptional drive and picturesque row. This device might, not certainly but possi- The committee had been set up, as we bly, work in real war in three or four years. saw, from inside the Air Ministry. One of Nothing else possibly could. Tizard, Hill, the reasons was, no doubt, to forestall criti- Blackett had faith in their own rea- cism from outside, which came most loudly soning. Without fuss, and without and effectively from Churchill. In 1934 he backward glances, the choice was had publicly challenged the government’s made. That was only a resolution underestimate of the size of Hitler’s air on paper, and they had to make force. His figures, which had been ILLUSTRATION BY SUZANNE BARRETT SUZANNE BY ILLUSTRATION it actual. produced by Lindemann, were The administrative mechanism much nearer the truth than the by which this was done is itself government’s. Thus, simultane- interesting. In form the Air Min- ously, there were going on the ister, Lord Swinton,4 arranged for secret deliberations and discus- a new high-level committee … . sions of the Tizard Committee, and Over this new body he himself an acrimonious military argument presided, and on to it was brought in full light in the House of Com- the government’s chief military mons and the press, with Churchill critic, Winston Churchill. In fact, the antigovernment spokesman. however, one has got to imagine It is one of the classical cases of a great deal of that apparently “closed” politics coexisting with casual to-ing and fro-ing by which “open” politics. Passing from one high English business gets done. to the other, an observer would not As soon as the Tizard committee have known that he was dealing thought there was something in with the same set of facts. By the radar, one can take it that Tizard middle of 1935 Baldwin, who had would lunch with Hankey5 at the just in form as well as fact become Athenaeum; Hankey, the secre- Prime Minister, wanted to reduce tary of the Cabinet, would find the temperature of the “open” mili- it convenient to have a cup of tea tary argument. He used the ortho- with Swinton and Baldwin. If the dox manoeuvre of asking Churchill Establishment had not trusted in. Not into the Cabinet: the per- Tizard as one of their own, there sonal rifts were too deep for that, might have been a waste of months but onto the new Swinton Com- or years. In fact, everything went mittee, [a] political committee …, through with the smoothness, the which was to keep a supervisory lack of friction, and the effortless speed insight, in beginning to teach one lesson eye on air defence. which can only happen in England when each to the scientists and the military, lessons The history is very tangled at this point.