The newly finished British Library was an excellent place to research all this: It's one of the great libraries of the world, and possibly the last, pyramid-like homage to the pre-Internet era. Many of the Library's science journals were still in the old Southampton Row reading rooms, where interior design and coffee facilities were not quite at the same level, but the photostats of original patent applications on the wall (Whittle's jet engine, the paperclip, the thermos flask, the Wright brothers' wing-warping) made up for a lot of that.
The University College science library in London was also useful, and even though the physical plant is now showing the effects of years of underfunding, the staff do an excellent job of trying to shore up the gaps. The London Library on St. James's Square doesn't suffer those funding problems and is a strong reason for living in this city. It's an early Victorian institution that still works: There are about a million books, on open shelves, including many early editions. I became used to reading texts that would refer to some earlier biographer's hard-to-obtain work, which could usually be conveniently found, albeit under a light sprinkling of dust, just an arm's length further along the shelf.
There was an added benefit there, since for Faraday and Maxwell and the like I could scoop up armfuls of their works or letters, and head outside to one of the benches under the oaks in the center of St. James's Square. It was a fitting location. To one side was the redbrick building which had housed Eisenhower's SHAEF headquarters in 1944, when the fears of a German atomic bomb were near their peak; behind me was the plaque to Ada, Countess Lovelace, the nineteenth-century predecessor of computer programmers, who experienced many of the ups and downs a woman's career in science was likely to take. Walking to a sushi bar for lunch took me past one of Newton's homes on Jermyn Street; when I finally settled for lunch I was right across from the great hall where the news confirming Einstein's general relativity predictions was released.
Most of the actual writing was done when my wife, Karen, was making a transition from being a distinguished historian, to being a distinguished business consultant. We'd always spent a lot of time with our children, but when she was off in Geneva or Washington or Berlin—although she later helped with draft after draft, giving kind, incisive support—I had even more of the day with them. This meant writing time was often broken up. But curiously the text proceeded faster than before.
What happened, I think, was that by really getting into the time with the kids, I was forced to have the breaks that authors rarely allow themselves. Strolling to school we'd get down on our bellies to observe ants in the grass, or we'd stop and chat with the men drilling the streets, who almost always had younger brothers and sisters, or kids of their own, and so were only too happy to rest and explain how their tools worked to the fascinated three and five year olds. There'd also be wall walking and "secret spy," long lunchtimes and afternoons. There were times when I was grumpily distracted (sorry guys), but mostly I looked forward to our hours together, and the wondrous refreshment that very young, very curious minds provide (thanks guys).
When it finally did get too late for more, and two exhausted youngsters were asleep in their bunk beds, I'd settle into a big chair in their room (it felt a lot friendlier there than being in my study), with notes and bound volumes spread out, and then I'd gladly return for hour after hour to this book, as the sky darkened and the London streets went quiet outside. A few times—the writing racing along; my coffee long since cold—I'd realize I'd gone the whole night through; most notably once while writing about the chemistry of the sun, as the roaring sphere of that star—powered by thermonuclear blasts in accord with E=mc2—began to lift from behind the Earth, somewhere far beyond the Thames estuary; lifting, rolling, to embrace our lives.
I loved writing this book.
E=mc2 Page 29
