by Andrew Brown
In his own book, Bernal examined the possibility that mankind would divide into progressive and unprogressive factions, but unlike the aristocracies of history, the progressive class would gain its position from scientific intelligence. In a modern nation, he believed that the scientists would have a dual function: ‘to keep the world going as an efficient food and comfort machine, and to worry out the secrets of nature for themselves.’29 If these conditions for a progressive society led by scientists were met, and mankind as a whole was given peace, plenty and freedom, the masses ‘might well be content to let alone the fanatical but useful people who chose to distort their bodies or blow themselves into space’.30 But in the end, Sage discounted the development of a permanent human dimorphism because of the emotional conservatism of scientists themselves, who in ‘every respect, save their work… resemble their non-scientific brothers, and no one would be more shocked than they at the suggestion that they were raising up a new species and abandoning the bulk of mankind’.31 The safeguard of scientists’ collective emotional identification with the rest of humanity would not, in his view, protect the world against the unforeseen or unintended consequences of their research. For example, Sage foresaw the possibility that ‘scientific corporations might well become almost independent states and be enabled to undertake their largest experiments without consulting the outside world’.32 In that setting, the emotional allegiance of scientists might switch from humanity at large to the progress of science itself, reversing the existing balance against the splitting of mankind. Sage explored this possibility and arrived at his final, chilling, fancy that ‘the world might, in fact, be transformed into a human zoo, a zoo so intelligently managed [by the new species of scientists living in space] that its inhabitants are not aware that they are there merely for the purposes of observation and experiment’.33 Lest it be thought that Bernal was completely besotted by the beneficence of science and its practitioners, it is worth remembering his statement that ‘the scientists are not masters of the destiny of science; the changes they bring about may, without their knowing it, force them into positions which they would never have chosen. Their curiosity and its effects may be stronger than their humanity.’34
The World, the Flesh & the Devil was written with extraordinary imagination, and the predictions about the material world reveal Bernal to be an estimable prophet. Apart from imagination, such a book required great audacity, since the author could expect to receive ridicule or just quiet disapproval from senior colleagues. Although J.B.S. Haldane had blazed the trial when writing Daedalus, he was regarded by many as a dangerous character; the tradition that academics should remain cloistered and not debase themselves by communicating with the general public was still strong. One of those most likely to disapprove of The World, the Flesh & the Devil was Sir Ernest Rutherford, a loyal subject of the British Empire and a man of conventional beliefs and Christian morals, whose distaste for speculation in science was the foundation on which experimental physics at the Cavendish was built – he was fond of reminding his juniors that endless theorizing without the hard work of experimental verification was like ‘drawing a blank cheque on eternity’. Sage, of course, did work hard in the laboratory and like Rutherford was a prolific source of ideas for others to test; but The World, the Flesh & the Devil taken together with his communist politics and sexual promiscuity made him ‘one of the two men whom Rutherford loathed’.35
In The World, the Flesh & the Devil, there was little direct reference to Marxism, although as we have seen, Bernal did explore various potential class struggles for power, especially that between a scientific elite and a non-progressive majority. In Microcosm, Bernal repeatedly pledged his allegiance to Marxism as the way to order society and yet he retained a concern for the individual citizen that puts into question his level of ideological commitment at that time. Having abandoned his Catholic faith, he had not yet apparently come to the realization that Marxism also has to be swallowed whole. Its modernity and quasi-scientific form appealed to him enormously, still he had reservations: ‘Ever since Marx, the chief scientific basis of communism has lain in economics. Economics has seemed the only basis on which communist theory could rest; but I think it is safe to predict that in future the place of economics will be taken by psychology.’ In reality, Marx’s original theories sclerosed into absolutist dogma, and the only applications of psychology in communist systems were in the production of propaganda or, even more crudely, in the inculcation of mass fear; there was certainly no inclination to understand individual human differences. Indeed, the historian, Robert Conquest, has identified the assumption ‘that our knowledge of the workings of human behaviour is now so scientific that we can shape society according to scientific, or rational, blueprints’ as Marxism’s ‘most persistent fault, and the hardest to be rid of’.36 Bernal, for all his protestations in his chapter ‘The Devil’ about the rudimentary understanding of what makes men tick, would not avoid this fallacy.
In an essay, ‘Unholy alliance’,37 that first appeared a year after The World, the Flesh & the Devil, Bernal mounted a vigorous attack on the Church as a conservative force protecting wealth and property, while denying the poor material improvements in their lives. Science, which had exposed the basic beliefs of religion such as the creation, Adam and Eve and ‘the whole crop of miracles’ as just ‘plain lies’, now offered the prospect of a much more secure and comfortable world. ‘If science were used properly there would be no need for anyone in the world to go hungry’,38 and this alone justified the destruction of the present ‘tottering social order’ which was supported by religion. To Sage in 1930, the outcome seemed inevitable since the new Soviet state had denounced religion as ‘unnecessary and harmful, while science was to be the basis of the reconstruction of material and social life’.39
At the time Bernal wrote ‘Unholy alliance’, Stalin was ordering the liquidation of the kulaks, or smallholders, and the collectivization of farms. The utter desolation that soon followed dwarfed any biblical famine, yet was blithely denied by visiting Western intellectuals like George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs. That Bernal felt able to publish this essay in a collection nearly twenty years later, with no apparent embarrassment, while tipping his hat to ‘the enormously increased control over environment that has come with the full-scale and conscious application of science and… the development of the social forms of the organised working class capable of utilising that science on a large scale, first in the Soviet Union’40 showed that he had still not tumbled to the big lie. Bernal always insisted on portraying Marx as a scientist, but in assessing Marxism he failed to heed Rutherford’s wise dictum about the dangers of endless theorizing in the absence of supporting evidence.
5
The New Kingdom
The Cavendish Laboratory in 1927 was passing through a quiet period. Patrick Blackett’s bright star was already shining in the firmament, but the other young men in Rutherford’s department were engaged in painstaking preparatory work – refining experimental techniques and building new equipment – not yet making fundamental discoveries of their own. Rutherford was steadfast in his intent to reveal the structure of the atomic nucleus, relying for the most part on the trusty α-particle as his major tool of interrogation. Unlike Bernal, Rutherford was sceptical of the new quantum theory, and did not disguise his mistrust – for example, thanking Heisenberg, who had just delivered an invited lecture to the Cavendish Physical Society in perfect English, for ‘a lot of interesting nonsense’.1 Rutherford’s research programme was not seen as having any possible practical applications and did not attract much outside funding. The entire annual budget during the late 1920s for the Cavendish, including salaries and wages, apparatus and materials, heating, water, gas and electricity, averaged between £10,000 and £15,000, with nearly all the money coming from students’ fees.2 The Victorian building could not be extended and space was already at a premium; Bernal would have to be content with four, dimly lit, rooms for his X-ray crystallography
group.
Arthur Hutchinson, the Professor of Mineralogy, did his best to make this limited accommodation ready for his new lecturer. He wrote to Bernal to tell him that the water supply had been connected and that there would soon be electricity from the main in Free School Lane.3 He could not have shown more consideration in planning Bernal’s work schedule: ‘I have only put you down for a single course of lectures (eight) in the Easter Term – my idea was that you would be fully occupied for the next six months in installing apparatus and getting it going, and in starting research and that a single course of lectures of rather more than an elementary character was all that we ought to expect of you.’4 A series of twelve introductory lectures would be given by W.A. (Peter) Wooster, the demonstrator in crystal physics, who had been one of Rutherford’s most promising research students. The only other original member of staff in structural crystallography was Arthur Lanham, a young technician, who taught himself to become an accomplished instrument maker; he would be just as crucial to the success of Bernal’s laboratory as the technicians in the main Cavendish department were to the revolutionary discoveries in nuclear physics. His first task with Bernal was to set up an X-ray tube brought from the Davy Faraday laboratory of the Royal Institution. At one point, they had disconnected it from the mains supply but neglected to discharge the condenser; Bernal held the earth wire and told Lanham to cut it, forgetting there was a potential of 40,000 volts across it: ‘Sage gave a tremendous yell and went half way across the room, and I went down on my backside about 6 yards away.’5
In general, Sage was very happy to be back in Cambridge and to be mixing with the great men of science. Rutherford and Sir William Pope, the Professor of Chemistry, invited him to tea. He heard Rutherford lecture on the nucleus at the Cavendish Physical Society, but this was surpassed by Niels Bohr’s visit in early November 1927 and his talk on the ‘Quantum of action’. Bohr had just come from a Solvay Congress in Brussels, where he had spent most of his time countering Einstein’s criticisms of quantum mechanics.6 Rutherford, in contrast to his rude treatment of Heisenberg, always accorded Bohr the greatest respect, and the occasion struck Bernal as an historic scene.7 After the lecture, Bernal dashed off to London by train and spent the night with Kitty ‘very happily’.8 Two weeks later, he had breakfast with Kitty and was then pleased to return to ‘Cambridge and away from women’!9 Bernal also recorded in his diary that he was ‘V. happy with E[ileen]’, although on 13 November Eileen threatened to divorce him because he was late for tea.10 He and Eileen and the toddler Michael were living in an old rented house in Hildersham, a village outside Cambridge, which Bernal loved.
As Professor Hutchinson expected, the first year in the new department was a very busy one for Bernal. He continued his research on single crystals of bronze, but otherwise his time was largely taken up with organizing work for others in the laboratory. As soon as the academic year was over, at the suggestion of Sir William Bragg, Bernal undertook a European tour to survey different schools of crystallography. Sage was in many ways the ideal choice for such a role because, apart from being an acknowledged expert on the single crystal rotation technique, he was well versed in crystallography’s published literature. He took a round view of how the subject related to the other sciences, and would be just as interested in work that promised to spill over into biology or quantum physics as in direct structural analysis. He was easy to talk to and his genuine enthusiasm for others’ efforts encouraged them to share their thoughts and aspirations.
Bernal was away for two months and visited 14 institutions, mostly in Germany. In his handwritten report, he first defined the English school with its ‘emphasis on the actual atomic positions [in the crystal] from accurate intensity determinations, and the chief instrument is the ionization spectrometer. Photographic methods are considered definitely subsidiary and are only used where the ionization method cannot be profitably employed. Even where the intensities are not sufficient, owing to the complexity of the substance, to determine the actual atomic positions, some plausible model is usually suggested.’11 The German crystallographers, by contrast, were sceptical about the British emphasis on establishing atomic positions, and restricted themselves largely to considerations of symmetry so that they were satisfied with ‘finding the [unit] cell and space group of any crystal’.12 Although the Germans seemed prepared to spend more on equipment, Bernal found that the ionization spectrometer was an almost unknown instrument there. He assessed the individual schools by criteria which included leadership, equipment and experimental techniques.
While he was in Berlin, Sage met up with Helen Kapp, a young English artist who was then studying in Berlin. At his urging, they visited the Museum of Primitive Chinese Art, which had just reopened in new premises. The collection was disorganized after the move and was unlabelled. Sage wandered round talking freely about all the exhibits – bronzes, frescoes of Mongolian horses, and pots of various types and dynasties. After a while they were shadowed by a man, who was clearly listening to Sage’s commentary. Eventually he came up to them and bowed. ‘Herr Professor,’ he said to Sage, ‘I think you must come from the British Museum.’ Sage was taken aback. ‘But you know everything – everything you have said about all the exhibits is absolutely correct.’ The man was the Director of the Museum.13 On another evening, he was with Helen at the Romanisches Café, when a group of Hitler’s brownshirts came stomping through, giving Sage his first sight of the Nazis.
The scientific leader who impressed him most during his summer visit was Hermann Mark, an Austrian of great charm and energy, who was only a few years older than Bernal. Mark did not work in one of the ancient German universities, but was running an X-ray diffraction laboratory for the industrial giant I.G. Farben in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine. He had moved there in 1927 from the Institute of Fibre Chemistry at Dahlem on the outskirts of Berlin. That institute was founded in 1920 under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gesellschaft as a centre of applied research to bring fresh ideas to Germany’s moribund textile industry. At the Institute of Fibre Chemistry, a team of exceptionally talented research workers assembled, and they made a start by subjecting crushed natural fibres to X-ray analysis.14 Materials like silk and cotton had previously been assumed to have an amorphous gel-like structure, but X-ray diffraction photographs revealed a repeating pattern of small crystalline segments, termed crystallites, embedded along the fibre axis. So far from an amorphous structure, insoluble fibrous proteins, at least in places, resembled crystalline material. Research was then extended to whole fibres of materials like rubber and cellulose, where according to one of his colleagues, Mark showed ‘manipulative skill bordering on genius’.15 Mark, more modestly recalled how the group subjected the fibres to ‘swelling, stretching, relaxing and drying. We established changes in their crystalline-amorphous system and explored how the macromolecules react to changes in their physical and chemical environment.’16
During his 1928 summer visit, Bernal found Mark’s research team at the I.G. Farben laboratory working on structural models for natural polymers like silk, rubber, and cellulose. Together with a Swiss chemist in the laboratory, Kurt Meyer, Mark published what would become a very influential model of cellulose, based on its X-ray pattern but also consistent with the known chemical data. Cellulose, a polysaccharide not a protein, is the primary structural component in the cell walls of plants and gives them their toughness. Meyer and Mark proposed that cellulose comprised a long chain of glucose rings each linked to the next in line through an oxygen atom. Cellulose fibres were built up by a number of these long chains running parallel to the axis of the fibre with secondary forces sticking the chains together.17 Although cellulose gave X-ray diffraction patterns that were far from clear-cut, when taken together with other chemical and physical data, Mark showed how a detailed structural model could be assembled that began to explain crucial properties of such an important natural substance. Bernal was entranced.
There was one important similarity between cell
ulose and proteins that had been known since the mid-nineteenth century. The English chemist, Thomas Graham, noticed that starches, proteins and cellulose formed sticky solutions that would not easily pass through fine filters. He called them colloids and contrasted them with the crystalloid solutions of inorganic salts and simple sugars that readily cross filters and membranes. Graham also suggested that colloids were in fact aggregates of crystalloids – a theory that was still popularly applied to proteins in the early 1920s, and which seemed to be supported by the X-ray diffraction results being obtained at the Institute of Fibre Chemistry in Dahlem. But by 1928, several lines of enquiry in Germany and elsewhere had effectively demolished the aggregate theory, and it was generally accepted that proteins were true macromolecules whose primary structures were long chains of amino acids linked together.18