Prof: The Life and Times of Frederick Lindemann [Paperback]

The question of the best time at which to write a biography is a debatable one. If the book is written during the subject's lifetime, either the subject will work closely with the biographer, or there will be a quarrel of some sort between the subject and the biographer; in both cases, objectivity will suffer! The same argument applies, though with less force, to biographies written soon after the death of the subject. Many of his/her friends and associates will still be alive and naturally concerned that their wishes are respected; the result is that aspects of the biography are suppressed or distorted. A good example in my recollection is Ronald Clark's biography of Sir Edward Appleton, written a few years after Appleton's death in 1965. Clark had to deal very carefully with Appleton's attitude to Robert Watson Watt and his claims as the "father of radar", since Watson Watt was still alive and there could have been a libel action.

Fort's biography of Lindemann falls into a second category of having been written many years after the subject's death. "Libel chill" is no longer a factor. There are only a few fresh personal reminiscences from his students and younger associates who are still alive. However Lindemann moved in elevated circles and many memoirs and papers are available from his deceased associates. Fort has done a fine job in accessing these papers; his book is enriched by well-arranged quotes from people who knew and worked with Lindemann, ranging from his faithful servant to Winston Churchill.

Lindemann was a physicist with wide-ranging scientific interests, ranging through thermodynamics, relativity, infra-red radiation and nuclear chemistry. He was obsessed with numbers and he always carried a slide rule for on-the-spot calculations. Fort has faced up fairly well to the challenge of presenting scientific material to the general reader; however the technical descriptions are solely in words and there are no diagrams or equations.

Much is made of Lindemann's opposition to the one-sided "classical" (anti-science) bias that existed in Oxford and in educated circles generally, in the first half of the 20th century. At school as late as the 1950s I can remember that the brightest boys were steered into classical studies and anyone expressing an interest in science was considered eccentric. Lindemann fought doggedly against this sort of bias. Tact was not his strong point and there are some wonderful pieces of academic repartee in the book. Towards the end of his life, he played a major part in the foundation of Churchill College with the aim of making science academically respectable in the ancient universities; however it is of interest that the college was founded not in Lindemann's beloved Oxford, but in what he disdainfully called "The Eastern zone".

A new book about Lindemann by the late Prof.Russell Burns is due out later this year and I am looking forward to it.