- Fort, Adrian.
Prof: The Life of Frederick Lindemann.
London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.
ISBN 0-224-06317-0.
-
Frederick Lindemann is best known as Winston Churchill's scientific
advisor in the years prior to and during World War II. He was the
central figure in what Churchill called the “Wizard War”, including
the development and deployment of radar, antisubmarine warfare
technologies, the proximity fuze, area bombing techniques, and
nuclear weapons research (which was well underway in Britain before
the Manhattan Project began in the U.S.). Lindemann's talents were
so great and his range of interests so broad that if he had settled
into the cloistered life of an Oxford don after his appointment as
Professor of Experimental Philosophy and chief of the Clarendon
Laboratory in 1919, he would still be remembered for his scientific
work in quantum mechanics, X-ray spectra, cryogenics, photoelectric
photometry in astronomy, and isotope separation, as well as for restoring
Oxford's reputation in the natural sciences, which over the previous
half century “had sunk almost to zero” in Lindemann's words.
Educated in Germany, he spoke German and French like a native.
He helped organise the first historic Solvay Conference in 1911,
which brought together the pioneers of the relativity and
quantum revolutions in physics. There he met Einstein, beginning
a life-long friendship. Lindemann was a world class tennis
champion and expert golfer and squash player, as well as a
virtuoso on the piano. Although a lifetime bachelor, he was known
as a ladies' man and never lacked female companionship.
In World War I Lindemann tackled the problem of spin recovery in
aircraft, then thought to be impossible (this in an era when
pilots were not issued parachutes!). To collect data and test his
theories, he learned to fly and deliberately induced spins in some of
the most notoriously dangerous aircraft types and confirmed his
recovery procedure by putting his own life on the line. The
procedure he developed is still taught to pilots today.
With his close contacts in Germany, Lindemann was instrumental in
arranging and funding the emigration of Jewish and other endangered
scientists after Hitler took power in 1933. The scientists he
enabled to escape not only helped bring Oxford into the first rank of
research universities, many ended up contributing to the British and
U.S. atomic projects and other war research. About the only thing he
ever failed at was his run for Parliament in 1937, yet his influence
as confidant and advisor to Churchill vastly exceeded that of a Tory
back bencher. With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined Churchill
at the Admiralty, where he organised and ran the Statistical Branch,
which applied what is now called Operations Research to the conduct
of the war, which rôle he expanded as chief of “S Department” after
Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. Many of the wartime
“minutes” quoted in Churchill's
The Second World War
were drafted by Lindemann and sent out verbatim over Churchill's
signature, sometimes with the addition “Action this day”. Lindemann
finally sat in Parliament, in the House of Lords, after being made
Lord Cherwell in 1941, and joined the Cabinet in 1942 and became a
Privy Counsellor in 1943.
After the war, Lindemann returned to Oxford, continuing
to champion scientific research, taking leave to serve
in Churchill's cabinet from 1951–1953, where he almost
single-handedly and successfully fought floating of the
pound and advocated the establishment of an Atomic
Energy Authority, on which he served for the rest of
his life.
There's an atavistic tendency when writing history to focus
exclusively on the person at the top, as if we still lived in the age
of warrior kings, neglecting those who obtain and filter the
information and develop the policies upon which the exalted leader
must ultimately decide. (This is as common, or more so, in the
business press where the
cult
of the CEO is well entrenched.) This biography, of somebody
many people have never heard of, shows that the one essential
skill a leader must have is choosing the right people to listen
to and paying attention to what they say.
A paperback edition is now available.
March 2005 