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The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom
 
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The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (Hardcover)

by Brian Cathcart (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Viking (26 Aug 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0670883212
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670883219
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.8 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 224,883 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #27 in  Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Physics > Atomic & Molecular Physics
    #32 in  Books > Science & Nature > Physics > Atomic & Molecular

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Product Description

Review
The taming of atomic energy came about due to the efforts of three Cambridge scholars and a lump of plasticine. Without them we wouldn't have today's nuclear power stations, various medical advances - and of course the atomic bomb. We would also very likely have had no hope of sending humans to the other planets of our solar system. Weapons of mass destruction, not to mention fuel for spacecraft, were however the farthest things from the minds of young researchers John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, as Cathcart shows in this pulsating book. With all the pace of a thriller he reveals how that lump of plasticine, and a few pencil-and-paper calculations, helped Cockcroft and Walton to find how the atom could be split. Egged on by Lord Rutherford, who had discovered the atomic nucleus some years earlier, the pair set the history of humanity on a course they never imagined possible. Adventure and science meet in a great and accessible tale of this revolution in a Cambridge laboratory. (Kirkus UK)

Sunday Telegraph
'Brian Cathcart tells this exhilarating story with both verve and precision'

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars You don't need to be interested in flies or cathedrals., 22 Sep 2004
This is a really good tale for everyone: from scientists interested in the progress of atomic physics at the start of the last century, to anyone simply wanting in a good human story relating to a time now past. The science is there if you want it and is explained helpfully without annoying the specialist. Find out how the strands of science come together and coalesce at just the right moment: how the gentlemanly relaxed Brits get there almost by accident, while competing Americans puff and find they are shooting for the wrong goal. If your normal reading is Stephen Hawking you will surely like this. And so will you, equally, if you read Agatha Christie or Delia Smith.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars The race to split the atom:, 17 Dec 2007
This review is from: Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (Paperback)
Brian Cathcart, the author of this book, explains during his introductions that he is a 'non-scientist' writing upon the records and historical accounts of how the nuclei in the atom became split, the great onset of nuclear physics. Mr. Cathcart's research, as is shown by the lengthy bibliography, is a very good detailed account not only in how the disintegration process came about but also an intricate lesson in atomic physics itself. Brian certainly links the science with world events that followed and, in taking forward the work of Chadwick, Cockcroft and Walton illustrates the advances of science that made the process of 'fission' with uranium and plutonium identifiable.

The novel concentrates on the years prior to 1932. Professor Lord Rutherford, director of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, authorised through curiosity experimental trials to proceed on the hunches of Walton and Cockcroft who, later themselves, received the Nobel Prize for research into atomic nuclear theory. Painstakingly patient, the two scientists enter a race against time in being the first to announce the breakthrough. The announcement, on being first to transmute atomic nuclei, was made by Lord Rutherford, unusually at the Royal Society before official publication within the officially recognised scientific journals. Rutherford had no choice given the rapid advance of scientists elsewhere working on similar projects. Brian Cathcart gives a detailed and exploratory analysis of scientific trial and error, the developments in advancing artificially accelerated particles and the well documented practices at the Cavendish, the Cambridge Institute that has fathered major breakthroughs in scientific research.

A book that should be an essential component for any budding scientist eager to understand the evolution of nuclear physics and, a guide for anyone interested in tracing nuclear theory to date, the author also shows how the work of Cockcroft and Walton reconciles to the theory of Einstein. The splitting of the atom equates to the energy released under Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Einstein himself having visited the Cavendish in meeting with the two men.

The last words of the book summarily sum up the whole book in a virtual nutshell. Expounding the words of Lord Rutherford to a journalist from the Daily Herald, the professor ends: "We are rather like children, who must take a watch to pieces to see how it works."

www.markatscotland.blogspot.com
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Splitting the Atom: Experimental Physics in 1930 , 16 Nov 2006
By John Bamfield - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (Paperback)
This is a delightful book and a good read. The experimental work of Ernest Walton and John Cockcroft and the working conditions in the Cavendish laboratory are clearly explained. The personalities of the main actors, including Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick are sympathetically drawn. Also the growing competition from research in the USA is well depicted.
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