~7~~-------------------------------------SPRINGBCXJKS------------------------N_A_ru_~__ v_o_L._Jo_s_~_AP __ Rr_L_r9M_ same, when it's compiled as successfully as what was in the sheer physics of it an abso­ Cockcroft: a novel this one, the comprehensive compilation lutely fundamental discovery. The authors perspective undeniably earns its place in the library. of this book take in their stride Cockcroft I was an admirer of Cockcroft, a fine, and Walton's being made to wait so long­ William Cooper stocky, sensible, cautious Yorkshireman, theirs not to reason why, they say. But what who indulged in a minimum of speech and about ours? Did it take the Nobel Cockcroft and the Atom. in practically no change of facial committee nineteen years to recognize the By Guy Hartcup and T.E. Allibone. expression. (That expression was neverthe­ experiment as breaking open an entirely Adam Hilger, Bristol!Heyden, Phila- less amiable, thoughtful, smiling.) If one new line of powerful experiments to be delphia: 1984. Pp.320. £18.95, $34. addressed a remark to him, it was only made with particle-accelerators? Or did it when, after the ensuing silence, he either take those members who opposed the took the famous black notebook out of his award all that time to disappear from the SrNCE the title of Hartcup and Allibone's pocket or actually said something, that one scene? Or what? Someone must know. book may sound a bit vague, perhaps I knew for certain that he'd heard. It gave me There's a fascinating detail I should really should begin by saying what Cockcroft and lasting pleasure to think that at a dinner­ like to be told. the A tom is about. It does not set up- as it party in his house I'd made him burst into Chadwick, speaking clearly for the seems to me - to be a full-dress biography laughter - till I saw in this book a photo­ "physics-is-physics" school, said of of John Cockcroft (1897-1967), or a graph of him laughing with George Cockcroft: history of atomic science during the For example, his knowledge is wide but it is first half of the twentieth century; not at all profound; his views are of rather a rather to be planned as a sort of docu- dull everyday hue. On the other hand his mentary about the context of events in temper is so equable and his patience and which Cock croft's life, as scientist and persistence so inexhaustible that we can put man of affairs, was central, of events in lively and relatively irresponsible men who in the world of atomic physics that he have the real feeling for research without influenced or that influenced him. fear of upsetting the balance. Does the plan succeed? For most I sense a pleasing Jane Austen-ish readers I imagine the answer will be a snobbery about the physics-is-physics straight "yes": for myself, some mild school to which Cockcroft was neither reservations. The book has been born nor bred. He was an applied extensively "researched", as it is now physicist. Between leaving school and called - records have been consulted, turning up at Cambridge in 1922 to read letters read, people interviewed; the for the Mathematical Tripos, he had facts laid end-to-end in chronological taken a mathematics degree at order. "A comprehensive compil­ Manchester University, served as a ation" is the phrase that springs to signaller in the trenches at Passchen­ mind. (The mother-and-father of the daele, returned to Manchester Tech to comprehensive compilation is of take a degree in electrical engineering course the computer.) Every event is while doing a Metro-Vick apprentice­ noted, every participant named. ship. Yet how right Chadwick's intim­ Speaking as a novelist- and why not, ations turned out to be, of what Cock­ if there is a fresh view to be added croft could be entrusted with, both thereby? - I find something Zola­ inside and outside the world of physics esque about the authors' naturalistic - spending the early years of the piling on of detail, maintaining The Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, April 1932, with Second World War on the vital practic­ throughout exactly the same degree of Ernest Walton seated to observe the scintillations. alities of radar; then taking over the detail: what I miss is Zola-esque art; that is Gamow. Well, Gamow was a funny man. wartime atomic scientists' team in to say, in down-to-earth terms, an author's It was a theoretical memorandum Montreal and Chalk River; then coming personal voice sounding through, an of Gamow's which sowed the seed of the back to run them in Harwell, each team author's personal intelligence commenting Cockcroft-Walton "atom-splitting" ex­ having its contingent of "lively men with a and interpreting, an author's personal periment, the first of its kind, in 1932. real feeling for research". (As I was party literary talent - the things that make one Cockcroft cottoned on to what Gamow to appointing many of the Harwell contin­ want to read a book for itself, as well as for was saying about bombarding elements gent, I should be the last person to say any the information it contains. with protons, and he addressed to Ruther- of them were "relatively irresponsible".) ! don't doubt that many readers will feel ford a calculation (reproduced in this "Without upsetting balance." That I'm asking too much: out of 100 ears on book) that led to the famous experiment exactly describes Cockcroft's reign at which my mild strictures fall, 98 will being set up. Then something odd hap­ Harwell from 1946 to 1958, during which probably be deaf to them. Just as well, pened. Using a lithium target bombarded he directed some of its most important perhaps, since the comprehensive compil- with a beam of protons, Cockcroft and research: he may have been neither a super ation is with us, and will be so to an Walton began by looking for gamma-rays; administrator nor a born manager - but increasing extent. (Yesterday a youthful and it was when Rutherford, fed up with the place balanced. American pupil of mine said to me en thus~ their getting no results for a couple of years The authors observe that Cockcroft had iastically: "The word-processor makes from their electroscopes, told them to his failures and disappointments, made his writing so easy!" Just so.) However- to install fluorescent screens, that they mistakes. He made a mistake - astonish­ be fair- one can't help but feel that all the promptly picked up the alpha-particles into ingly against caution - with his over­ facts are there. Yet on some pages there are which the lithium atoms had been split; a optimism about the experiments aimed at as many as a dozen names, normally far too prime experiment, for which the two of generating power from fusion. And his many for comfortable reading. Comfort- them were awarded a Nobel prize for private hopes of going back to his old able enough for me in this case, because physics - nineteen years later. James college, St John's, Cambridge, were often half of them were of men I'd come Chadwick, for discovering the neutron at dashed when, in a magisterial election across myself in my time; but for the com- about the same time got his Nobel in three which reminded him and his wife of C.P. fort of other readers I'm not so sure. All the years - very properly, for he had made Snow's The Masters, the Fellows elected © 1984 Nature Publishing Group _N_AT_u~~~vo~L~.n~~~~~RI_L_I~~----------------------SPRINGBQQKS:------------------------------------~'85 the Senior Tutor, and not Cockcroft, to be logical statements, it is nevertheless their Master. The upshot was a turn in his A feeling for the saturated with anomalies that Comfort career, a definitive turn to Whitehall and thinks support this Eastern insight. national affairs. It is interesting to unfathomable Consider the notorious EPR (Einstein­ speculate whether, if he had gone back to Martin Gardner Podolsky-Rosen) paradox, invented by Cambridge then, he would have played a Einstein and two associates as a thought comparable part in first national and later Reality and Empathy: Physics, Mind and experiment, but which recently has international affairs (though in a less Science in the 21st Century. received strong support from laboratory definitive way he was already embarked on By Alex Comfort. experiments. Two photons (in one version) both.) He was persuaded to join the State University of New York Press: are emitted in opposite directions by an Defence Research Policy Committee. As a 1984. Pp.272. Hbk $39.50; pbk $12.95. interaction that gives them opposing spins. committee-member in the conventional In QM, neither particle has a definite spin sense, he was practically a non-starter, for until measured, yet the two are so corre­ the simple reason that he rarely said DR ALEx Comfort, trained in classics at lated that if you measure A, thereby anything; but that didn't mean he was not Cambridge University, is the British geron­ creating, say, a plus spin, B will acquire a cogitating, participating and resolving on tologist who made a fortune with his best­ minus spin even though it may be light action. His action took place outside the sellers TheJoyofSexandMoreJoyofSex. years away. It is worse than that. If A is committee-room, in private meetings with Discussions with bright students at the measured a second time, it again will the members and other people one at a Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of acquire plus or minus spin with equal time.