by Andrew Brown
When the Civil Defence Research Committee was set up, it was intended that a physiologist should be appointed to complement the engineers and physicists. Now that the fighting had started, Bernal decided that there should be urgent consideration of the likely damage to humans, and he approached his friend Solly Zuckerman, at the Anatomy Department of Oxford University, to take charge of compiling evidence on the biological effects of explosions. He invited Zuckerman to come to Princes Risborough, only about twenty miles from Oxford, to meet Stradling and to give advice on the question of whether people in underground shelters might be harmed by shock waves passing through the earth from a bomb exploding nearby. Zuckerman suggested that the situation be simulated by placing some monkeys in a concrete-lined shelter and then detonating a bomb buried near the concrete wall. The test was carried out on Salisbury Plain in October 1939, with the monkeys being restrained against the concrete wall of a trench while a bomb was detonated. Zuckerman recalled ‘about two minutes after the explosion, Des and I were in the trench. The wall closest to the bomb had been fractured, but none of the monkeys seemed at all affected. Against the advice [of the Home Office Inspector of Explosions], Des and I then sat in another trench while a second bomb was fired. I do not think we were as close as the monkeys had been, but to the surprise of the others who were stationed much further away, neither of us was aware that a second bomb had been exploded before anxious faces peered in to see if we were safe. In those days no-one seemed to know anything about the precise effects of bombs.’13 By the end of the year, Zuckerman was effectively working fulltime for the Ministry of Home Security.
Birkbeck College had shut its doors to students on the outbreak of war. Several of the physics staff wrote to Bernal, offering their services for civil defence research. Carlisle asked to join the services, but Bernal refused to endorse his application form, telling him, ‘Wait until you hear from me.’14 In late September, he told Carlisle that he had made arrangements for him to work in Dorothy Hodgkin’s department in Oxford and he was to take the Birkbeck X-ray equipment with him. The equipment was new and not paid for – Bernal had been counting on a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) to cover the costs. The transfer to Oxford was effected, with Sage for once concerned about money and complaining about the carriage fee of £17 10s charged. Carlisle fitted into the new surroundings easily, continuing his novel structural investigation of the synthetic sex hormone, stilboestrol. Sage was fearful of the future of X-ray crystallography and wrote a long letter to the Rockefeller Foundation:
The position of X-ray research on proteins and viruses in this country is at present in a promising but critical state. I have myself been forced to drop it almost entirely by having taken up work in connection with National Defence. However, the work which was carried out in my laboratory is still continuing. Dr Fankuchen, as an American Citizen, has returned to the States… there he intends to carry on with X-ray work on proteins, though not for the moment with virus work. My other assistant, Mr Carlisle has been transferred to Oxford where with Mr Riley he is working under the direction of Miss Crowfoot. He has taken with him part of the Birkbeck apparatus. Dr Perutz is still working in my old lab in Cambridge and is receiving as you know a Rockefeller grant. Very interesting results are being obtained, notably… wet insulin and haemoglobin. If this work can be maintained there now seems a direct way to attack the fundamental problem of protein structure, namely that of the effect of the variation of water and salt content on the X-ray photographs. The position however is precarious. All research work which has no immediate bearing on the present military struggle is being carried on somewhat on sufferance, and funds for its continuation may be stopped at any moment. Even now it is difficult to find money to pay for apparatus and supplies already in use, and unless some support can come from the outside the whole work on this side of the water may come to an end in a few months time… I would like, therefore, to put the following suggestions… to the Foundation. That a sum of £1,000 should be granted to Dr Crowfoot… for researches on proteins and viruses, with the object of carrying out more general and fundamental investigations which I proposed in my original application of 12 December 1938… A grant of this size would enable the work to be carried out in a satisfactory way for another year or two. There is little serious risk of destruction by war as Oxford is not considered to be a military target.15
Sage also wrote to Fan in New York asking him to ‘get Cohn or somebody important to get Rockefeller to send Dorothy £1,000 at once. The apparatus will have to be pawned otherwise and about the only piece of good pure research on proteins stopped.’16 Dorothy learned within weeks that the RF approved her grant so that she was able to pay for the Birkbeck apparatus and for two research assistants.17
Bernal’s reassurance to the RF that Oxford was unlikely to be bombed because it was not a military target was, in the early months of the war, the received opinion. Indeed, Churchill circulated a note in November 1939 suggesting that the blackout restrictions should be relaxed because ‘we know it is not the present policy of the German Government to indulge in indiscriminate bombing in England or France’.18 It was the period of the Phoney War, when the British population began to adjust to the shortages and restrictions of wartime and was anxious about possible air-raids, but was not yet exposed to lethal dangers of the Luftwaffe. Sage was billeted in the small Oxfordshire village of Chinnor, at the foot of the Chiltern escarpment. The winter was a very cold one, and his life was complicated by ‘landlady difficulties’.19 At weekends he would either drive the short distance to Maid-ensgrove or into London to stay with Eileen. One evening they were invited to a dinner party at the flat of Cyril Connolly, the essayist and literary critic, who had just launched the magazine Horizon. Before Sage arrived, Connolly had confided to his other guests that he had discovered the true religion, Taoism. He asked them not to tell Sage about it because he did not want to have his cherished, new belief undermined. His guests kept quiet, but Connolly, an arch poseur, could not resist announcing at the dinner, ‘Sage – I must tell you – I have found the true religion! It has already given me great happiness and peace of mind. But knowing your scorn as a scientist for everything beyond the natural world, I’ve no intention of telling you what the religion is.’
‘Oh, but Cyril,’ Sage remarked, ‘I’m afraid you’ve gone too far already.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If one knows a man really well, that must be enough to tell one what religion he is going to take up.’
‘Tell me then – what is it in my case? Go on – tell us.’
Relishing the challenge, Sage laid down his knife and fork and took a drink. ‘In the first place, Cyril, it has to be something unusual, something nobody else has thought of yet – I don’t imagine you’ve suddenly discovered the underlying truths of Protestantism. Nor do I suppose you’ve decided to follow your friend Evelyn Waugh into the Catholic Church… seeing that he’s got there first. Nor do I fancy you’ll have been attracted into a warlike religion such as Shintoism. And I don’t even think you’ve become a Muslim – despite the attraction of four wives. Buddhism – that could be tempting… Except, of course, for one difficulty.’
‘What’s that, Sage?’
‘You’d have to look on the whole material world as an illusion – maya. I can’t imagine you doing that. Food, drink, even claret like this – an illusion? Not the religion for you, I’ll fancy, Cyril.’
By now, Connolly was looking uneasy, sensing that Sage was not going to lose the scent.
‘The really important thing for you, Cyril, in choosing a religion, must be that it makes absolutely no demands on you. You won’t want to attend temples or churches, give up a lot of your income to the poor, be obliged to say prayers at all odd hours… that’s not your religious cup of tea. And certainly you won’t want a spiritual programme that tries to turn you into an ascetic… So if you’ve really discovered the religion that suits you, Cyril – plenty of quiet contemplatio
n, vague in character, with no demands for a change of any kind in your way of life – I can only suppose you’ve become a Taoist.’20
Sage’s wit and supreme intelligence also adorned a less frivolous dinner group – Zuckerman decided to resurrect the Tots and Quots club. He and Bernal felt strongly that those running the war had no real understanding of the potential offered by the application of the scientific method to novel operational problems and did not recognize the untapped resources embodied in experimental scientists. The original members formed the nucleus for the reincarnated Tots and Quots, although not without some misgivings – Lancelot Hogben wrote to Zuckerman saying, ‘I’d like to meet Needham and yourself again, but can’t say that meeting Haldane and other popular fronters again thrills me. I think the shameless inconsistencies of and servile subservience to Stalin of such people as Haldane has put back the social influence of men of science for a whole generation.’21 The club structure was looser, reflecting the exigencies of wartime – Blackett, for example, declined to become a member but frequently attended the dinners. Zuckerman also made a point of inviting influential guests, who invariably came away impressed by the quality of the discussants, if not the food. The club reconvened in November 1939 at the Jardin des Gourmets in Soho, where the menu sounded enticing (Truite Gastronomme, Longe de Veau aux Primeurs, Poire Hélène), but was ‘not too good’ according to Zuckerman. The subject for discussion, appropriately, was the present state of science in England; after the recent success of The Social Function of Science, Sage was regarded as an expert, even in this company.
In his remarks, Bernal was pessimistic about the state of science and saw little evidence that it was being reorganized to meet the war needs. One reason was the war was being run by politicians and civil servants, who did not understand science, and this shortcoming was compounded by senior scientists, who did not want to disturb the equanimity of their masters. He observed that: ‘In the general view, scientists who want to get things done are meddlesome and troublesome.’22 Given that no initiative could be expected from the scientific societies, Sage thought that the impetus would have to come from the scientists themselves. It would be an uphill task because the Government was unprepared to support science, indeed the drastic lack of funding now threatened the future of any academic research in Britain, not to mention the supply of new scientists.
In February 1940, Zuckerman invited a representative of the French Embassy to a Tots and Quots dinner to explore what might be done to foster closer links between French and British scientists. By the end of the evening, it was decided that Crowther, the science journalist, should fly to France to see if it would be possible to found an Anglo-French Society of Sciences.23 Thanks to decisive support from Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Pierre Auger, the nuclear physicist, French ministerial consent was secured within days and an impressive committee was assembled. The British side was organized with no formality as a result of just one meeting in Zuckerman’s laboratory in Oxford. Joliot had been made the French president and it was decided that Paul Dirac, the Cambridge theoretical physicist, should be his British counterpart. The executive committee would comprise Bernal, Blackett, Cockcroft, Darlington, Waddington and Zuckerman, with Crowther as secretary.24
Even before Crowther’s trip to France in early April, Bernal had held some discussions with Colonel Paul Libessart, the Chief Engineer of French Artillery. As Bernal reported to Stradling, Libessart had studied the early phases of an explosion wave by the ‘ingenious method of spark photography, which enabled him to show that the process was more complicated than had been thought, preliminary detonation giving rise not to carbon monoxide, as had been supposed, but to carbon dioxide and carbon, which later reacted to form CO as a secondary explosion process’.25 Libessart had also established that an explosion produced a small central zone, only about twice the diameter of the charge, of very high pressure, beyond this a zone of gas burning and beyond that only the effect of the shock wave. In addition to his detailed studies of the mechanisms of explosion, Libessart had tested the resistance of certain materials such as reinforced concrete to high explosives in air. More important tests on bomb-proof shelters were going to be carried out at the end of the month in France, which Sage thought it would be useful to witness. Finally, the French had done far more experiments on animals than the British had, and ‘demonstrated that there is very little harmful effect upon animals outside the zone of re-inflammation of gases, i.e. about 30 feet from a 500 lb. bomb’.26 He suggested to Stradling that Zuckerman should be present for the animal experiments also scheduled for the end of April.
Sage and Zuckerman, together with a civil servant Mr R.C. Blyth, took the early morning boat train from Victoria station to Paris on Sunday 21st April. Their mission, in addition to witnessing the French explosives tests, was to learn about French civil defence measures and to act as ambassadors for the new Anglo-French Society of Scientists. They stayed at the Hotel Scribe, close to the Opera House. Monday was taken up with meetings every hour with different representatives of the French civil defence organizations. They met General Daudain at the Department of Passive Defence, and then Commandant Benier of the Sapeurs-Pompiers, who told them about the deficiency of trained firemen, especially in provincial towns. Zuckerman formed the opinion that the French expected that he and Sage should be in uniform. At the end of the afternoon, they went to L’Institut d’Optique, the largest optics research group in Europe. The institute was founded by Charles Fabry, who counted among his many contributions the discovery of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. Professor Fabry, now in his early seventies, described to the British visitors a new infrared radiation device designed in his laboratory that could detect a human being or a heat-generating object at a distance of several miles. Blyth noted in his diary that ‘Professor Bernal secured details’.27
Libessart gave them dinner at the Gare de Lyon before they boarded the night train for Savoy and the Alps. Their destination was Modane, a small border town, from where they could visit forts in the alpine segment of the Maginot Line that were intended to close off any invasion routes from Italy. About fifteen minutes after leaving the station, Zuckerman realized that he had left his briefcase of documents at the station restaurant. He informed Libessart, who was accompanying them on their tour, but he seemed unperturbed. The colonel arranged for the train to make an unscheduled stop and Zuckerman was soon reunited with his briefcase, which had been collected by the secret policemen who had been tailing them!28 They arrived in Modane at 7.30 the next morning, and found a lorry at the station to take them up to Fort Sapey, the largest of the Maginot emplacements. It had originally been built in 1885, but had undergone extensive modification as part of the Maginot policy of the previous decade and now boasted huge subterranean chambers and caverns. Zuckerman was far more impressed with the lunch, served underground with great ceremony, than he was with the explosives tests. In the afternoon they drove to the smaller Fort Le Lavoir, positioned at an altitude of seven thousand feet, south of Modane. There they witnessed more animal tests with dogs and rabbits being exposed to explosions in wire cages. Again the animals ‘seemed to be entirely unaffected by the blast’.29
They broke their journey back to Paris at Laroche Migennes in Burgundy, where they spent Thursday watching artillery tests; Bernal took particular interest in the effects of shell-fire on steel plates and concrete. He had an opportunity to discuss his observations with two professors at the Sorbonne the next morning, before visiting Libessart’s laboratory near Versailles for a demonstration of the spark photography method used to capture the trajectory of small projectiles. After touring the school of camouflage in the afternoon, Bernal gave an evening lecture, in French, at the Quai d’Orsay to an audience that included four Nobel Laureates and Emile Borel, the distinguished mathematician and current Minister of the French Navy. A dinner was then given in Bernal’s honour, where he and Zuckerman were introduced to the Earl of Suffolk, a tall dark-haired man about forty years old
. He was the British Government’s Scientific Liaison Officer in Paris, but no ordinary functionary. He lived at the Ritz Hotel, now crowded with wealthy Frenchmen who had abandoned their country estates because their servants had been called up for military service; he was a most cavalier nobleman, always in the company of beautiful women and often sporting a pair of pistols in his belt. He took Sage and Zuckerman to a number of parties over the weekend, before they flew back to England.
The Phoney War ended abruptly on 10th May, Sage’s thirty-ninth birthday, with the German invasion of Holland and Belgium. Bernal spent the day chairing a meeting of an explosives committee at Woolwich, attempting to coordinate research being carried out by the Army with that of the Ministry of Home Security.30 He was especially concerned that the Army should be aware of the French work that he had just learned about. He told them about a French method for measuring the velocities of shell fragments, and arranged to forward a report of French trials on the penetration of concrete by projectiles. His particular concern here was the time taken for a bomb to penetrate to its fullest depth in a concrete target so that the timing of the fuse could be set accordingly. Bernal’s scientific expertise was no longer confined to the passive protection of civilians, but was now being applied to the effectiveness of weapons. He learned about research going on at Woolwich into the detonation of explosives, the power of explosives, the measurement of pressure at the boundary of a detonating explosive, the rate of change of pressure in air surrounding an exploding charge, the conditions immediately preceding and immediately following the bursting of a bomb case, the effect of the thickness of charge-case on the blast produced by a bomb and on the fragmentation pattern. All this work, which the Army had generated in order to maximize lethality, had some bearing on civil defence issues. That evening, Bernal celebrated his birthday at the Players’ Theatre, where his sister Gigi was a cook. A few hundred yards away, on the other side of Trafalgar Square, Winston Churchill returned to Admiralty House from Buckingham Palace as the new Prime Minister.
