The Physicists

By C.P. Snow

C P Snow’s sketches of famous physicists and explanation of how atomic weapons were developed gives an overview of science often lacking. This study provides us with hope for the future as well as anecdotes from history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Stratus
• Release date: Jan 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9780755120178

C.P. Snow

C.P. Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age 11 at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory. In 1923, he gained an external scholarship in science at London University, whilst working as a laboratory assistant at Newton's to gain the necessary practical experience, because Leicester University, as it was to become, had no chemistry or physics departments at that time. Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Snow went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in 'Nature', and then 'The Spectator' before becoming editor of the journal 'Discovery' in 1937. He was also writing fiction during this period and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself. 'Discovery' became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry's technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government and also returned to writing, continuing the 'Strangers and Brothers' novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by 'Time of Hope' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, 'The Masters', in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn't published until 1970. C.P. Snow married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. He was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson's first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords. After finishing the 'Strangers and Brothers' series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was 'A Coat of Vanish', published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, 'The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World'. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the 'Financial Times'.

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Copyright & Information

The Physicists

First published in 1980

© Philip Snow; House of Stratus 1980-2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of C.P. Snow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 0755120175   EAN 9780755120178

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About the Author

CP Snow

Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age eleven at Alderman Newton’s School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory and also developed a lifelong love of cricket. In 1923 he became an external student in science of London University, as the local college he attended in Leicester had no science department. At the same time he read widely and gained practical experience by working as a laboratory assistant at Newton’s to gain the necessary practical experience needed.

Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. There, he went on to become a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period, with his first novel Death Under Sail published in 1932, and in 1940 ‘Strangers and Brothers’ was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed ‘George Passant’ when ‘Strangers and Brothers’ was used to denote the series itself.

Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry’s technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. ‘The Light and the Dark’ was published in 1947, followed by ‘Time of Hope’ in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, ‘The Masters’, in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel ‘Last Things’ wasn’t published until 1970.

He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson’s first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.

After finishing the Strangers and Brothers series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was ‘A Coat of Vanish’, published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, ‘The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World’. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the Financial Times.

In these later years, Snow suffered from poor health although he continued to travel and lecture. He also remained active as a writer and critic until hospitalized on 1 July 1980. He died later that day of a perforated ulcer.

‘Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English novelists’ - New Statesman

Dedication

TO

MY NIECE, STEFANIE

The First Excitement that Knowledge Gives

Most of us can remember the first time we heard or read something which seemed to throw a new light upon the world. In my own case, it comes back with extreme clarity. I was a child of eight or nine, and I had got hold of a bound volume of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia. It was a dark afternoon, and I was sitting by the fire. Suddenly, for the first time, I ran across an account of how atoms were supposed to be built up. The article had been written before Rutherford had discovered the nucleus, although by the time I read it the nuclear atom must have been well known. However, I was innocent of all that, I had never seen the word ‘atom’ before; this article – it was quite short and was contained, I think, in a section called the Child’s Book of Wonder – explained that its descriptions were only a guess, that no man knew the truth, and yet it seemed to open up a new sight of the world.

It told me that if you could go on cutting up any sort of material, you would arrive at atoms in the end. These atoms were so small that no one would ever see them and you could crowd countless millions on to a pin point. There were different sorts of atoms: and yet, if you cut up the atoms themselves, you found in some mysterious way that they were made of the same stuff. That idea probably came more easily to a child than to an adult, and I swallowed it whole.

The actual description of these atoms was rather quaint, in the light of later knowledge. Small as they were, they were packed with much smaller things called electrons (which, of course, had been known about since J J Thomson’s work in the nineties). According to the article, these electrons were like tennis balls in a cathedral; and, again according to the article, the tennis balls were in violent and random motion across the interior of the cathedral. It is a little difficult nowadays to see how that picture was ever conceived; I found it very easy to unlearn a few years later.

Yet, though so much of that article could not endure, it gave me the first sharp mental excitement I ever had. Somehow it gave me the heightened sense of thinking and imagining at the same time. And one is lucky if those exalted moments visit one more than ten or twenty times in a whole life…

Taken from ‘The First Excitement that Knowledge Gives’: editorial by the author in Discovery, April 1939

Introduction

The Physicists is a first draft, completed just before his death on 1 July 1980, of a book which C P Snow intended to write at greater length – he planned in particular to put more material in the last chapters. However, written as it was, straight off and at great speed, it has an unimpeded narrative impulse together with a completeness over the period of time, which simply ask for it to stand on its own as a literary work.

When he first told me about the book, I said: ‘Good God, you’ll have to do some research for that, won’t you?’ To which he replied: ‘I’m writing it largely from memory.’ I was silenced. He had one of the most remarkable memories I’d ever come across, a constant source of envy to me. Furthermore, we’d been close friends for nearly fifty years – in fact ever since the time when I was a Cambridge undergraduate reading physics, sent to him, then a Research Fellow of the College, to be taught – and so I was qualified to understand that he didn’t always do exactly what he said he was doing, not absolutely exactly. Wrong again! When I read the draft I recognized that it actually had been written largely from his memory. It’s odd – memory, even a memory as comprehensive as his, has its selectiveness, its patches, its things that stand out for reasons of other than factual importance. When an artist calls upon memory, what he writes has a life and a moving quality which scarcely ever infuses the product of the filing cabinet which we nowadays refer to as researched information.

A la recherche du temps perdu the book naturally took me straight back, at the beginning, to the days in the early 1930‘s when I myself was going to lectures by Rutherford and Dirac and Kapitsa, days so glorious that even my memory recalls something of their heroes. Rutherford, big and fresh-complexioned, his spectacles shielding light, transparent eyes, was indeed boomingly Jehovianic, albeit in an attractive way – one could see how the physicists near to him came to give him such devotion. Looking back on it, one is tempted to speculate on how far the aggressive boom, like Anthony Trollope’s aggressive boom, had grown as an outer protective shell – Snow remarks on this in the book – for a more sensitive, delicately responding nature. (Actually Blackett, in later years, always struck me as more Jehovianic – tall, thin, high-shouldered, with wavy hair and a flashing eye, in manner altogether loftier, nobler, graver: more of a Jehovah’s Jehovah, perhaps.)

Dirac was very, very different – taciturn in both languages, as Snow remarks. Quantum mechanics, whether one could understand it or not, was clearly the creation of a remarkable mind; but at five o’clock of a winter’s evening in an overheated lecture-room, one would have given anything for the exposition of a remarkable mind’s creation to be illumined by just the occasional human spark of temperament. Kapitsa, on the other hand, provided a running succession of human sparks of temperament, a lot of them of a wonderfully clowning kind, typically Russian, and typically deceptive – struggling with the English language, he appeared to keep getting things wrong and having to put them right. His broad face was smiling, his hair sticking straight out from its parting, and his nose, blunt and fleshy, making one wonder if that was the sort of nose Dostoievsky described as ‘plum-shaped’. Everyone loved going to Kapitsa’s lectures.

But I’m writing about Snow and his Weltanschauung, not embarking on a supplement of my own to The Physicists. (I’m tempted to make a quip to the effect that his Weltanschauung – a good word from the 1930s – seemed to me as comprehensive as his memory, with insights penetrating the worlds of science, of literature, of human affairs.) I’d recently been reading through some of the public speeches he made throughout the latter half of his life, about science and scientists, human affairs and human beings: reading through The Physicists I was frequently reminded of them; a sentence in the book setting up a resonance – one of his favourite words – with the beginning of a train of thought that he had followed at length, elsewhere on some other occasion, to a revealing conclusion.

A first case in point – his reference in the book to Arthur Schuster’s deliberate resignation from the Chair of Physics at Manchester University, in order to make way for Rutherford, resonated with his account of an incident three hundred years ago, when the Cambridge Professor of Mathematics, named Barrow, resigned his Chair on condition that his pupil was appointed to it, his pupil being Isaac Newton – an account with which Snow began his 1962 Rectorial Address to the University of St Andrews, ‘On magnanimity’. The essence of the address was a plea for magnanimity in our use of scientific and technical knowledge for ‘seeing to it that the poor of the world don’t stay poor...’

The great majority of the world’s population don’t get enough to eat: and from the time they are born, their chances of life are less than half of ours. These are crude words: but we are talking about crude things, toil, hunger,

Reviews for The Physicists

[antisyzygy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The introduction tells us that Snow wrote this from memory just before he died and was unable to finish it. It is astonishing to think of someone being part of/an observer at such a critical time for science and humanity in general. That's not to say there aren't gaps in this history, but even allowing for those, snow weaves an extraordinary tale of what is a relatively (sorry!) group of individuals and they impact they had on physicas and our future. As always with Snow, it's eminately readable, both in the scientific explanation and the narrative.