The Basis of Everything

by Andrew Ramsey

  On one occasion, peering over the top of his round glasses, Chadwick inquired if there was anything Oliphant might need to aid his experimental progress. Seizing the chance to request a motor-driven Hivac vacuum pump to replace the comparatively inefficient hand-driven models, Oliphant added to bolster his case: ‘that would make life much easier’.9

  ‘Well there’s none to spare,’ Chadwick snapped back, then turned on his heel, leaving Oliphant shocked and fearful that he had caused mortal offence. When the young student returned from an extended lunch break, spent stewing over how he might mend the rift he had clearly caused, a Hivac pump awaited on his workbench, with neither explanation nor recrimination.

  Oliphant’s relationship with Cockcroft was far more straightforward, and immediate. Cockcroft had been a late convert to physics, having completed a degree in engineering and then studied mathematics at Manchester University before the outbreak of war. Like so many who formed the Cavendish team, Cockcroft became attracted to physics on the strength of Rutherford’s lectures. He too had arrived at Cambridge – after a cadetship with electrical engineering heavyweight Metropolitan-Vickers – through an 1851 scholarship. He was also a newlywed, having married Elizabeth barely a month before Mark and Rosa Oliphant settled in England. Thus began a lifelong friendship between the two couples, with the Cockcrofts lending invaluable support and pastoral care to the young visitors as they adapted to life in Cambridge.

  Undoubtedly the most recognisable figure at the Cavendish was Thomson, now seventy, who would regularly appear to tend to his ongoing experimental work. Just as often, however, he could be found strolling slowly and splayfooted through Cambridge’s narrow streets, with his walking cane clasped in two hands behind his back and posing a hazard to passing pedestrians when he leaned forward to peer in shop windows. The grand old man would still occasionally deliver lectures, during which he was known to pause mid-sentence and flash an enigmatic smile, later revealed to be an urgent readjustment of his dentures.

  It was Thomson who had come to institute the 6pm closure of the Cavendish on weekdays. When the clock struck six, everyone was compelled to vacate as the porter, oversized keys clanking in his hand, theatrically pulled shut and locked the heavy oak gates. Working on weekends was also forbidden. Despite his early career habit of toiling late into the night, Rutherford had maintained the tradition. He would announce to all those still bent over their benches as the mandated closing time neared: ‘If it’s not concluded by 6pm, you’re better off going home to think about it.’

  During working hours, however, movement was more fluid. The laboratory thrived on its open-door policy, whereby staff and students were encouraged to wander freely into research spaces and common rooms to share ideas and learn first-hand. It fostered a palpable sense of teamwork, and helped fuse together the formidable intellectual force that Rutherford had assembled. This, in turn, would deliver a decade of most remarkable scientific output.

  Oliphant’s other new colleagues included the testy Aston, who worked alongside Thomson in the basement ‘garage’ and whose lectures were rated among the most interminable, being lifted directly from a textbook. But he would prove an unstinting source of wisdom to the eager young researcher from Adelaide.

  Arthur Eddington’s presentations on relativity were much more accessible, and it was his championing of Einstein’s formulae in the previous decade that had helped embed physics, and its explanations of matter and the universe, into the wider public consciousness.

  Patrick Blackett’s images of disintegrating nuclei brought to life the stories of the sub-atomic world that Rutherford presented across the globe, using photography made possible by the visionary cloud chamber, designed and then enhanced by another Cavendish character, C.T.R. Wilson.

  Like Rutherford, and then Oliphant, Wilson had been drawn to science through his close connection to nature. An inveterate hiker, he was working on weather observations on the highland peaks of his native Scotland when he noted the halo effect of sunlight upon the mist of low cloud that settled around him. From there, the idea of an instrument that might recreate this phenomenon in a laboratory setting took shape.

  Wilson found that if he suddenly expanded moist air within a sealed vessel, the moisture would condense into a mist of tiny drops, and this allowed him to recreate the glories and corona that are visible around the sun and moon. It was the first time a cloud had been artificially created in a laboratory, and in turn the cloud chamber would become an invaluable tool for showing the passage of highly energised sub-atomic particles.

  Rutherford liked to joke that, as he departed the Cavendish for Montreal in 1898, he went to Wilson’s workroom to bid him farewell and found the taciturn Scotsman studiously grinding the rounded end of a piece of glass tube into the shoulder of a second length. When he next returned to the laboratory years later for a visit, Rutherford vowed he went to the same room, which revealed Wilson at the same bench, grinding together the same pieces of glass valve. Wilson would never actively refute the tale.

  Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of the revolutionary evolutionist whose book had led Oliphant to a life of science, was among the institution’s other imposing names, as was Ralph Fowler, the Cavendish’s resident mathematician, who came to occupy the office alongside that of Rutherford – his father-in-law – on the second floor.

  * * *

  The other influential personality, if not a direct presence, on the Cavendish team was Mary Rutherford. Her most famous contribution to the life of the laboratory was the tea gatherings she would routinely host at Newnham Cottage on Sunday afternoons. These events were notionally social occasions for resident and visiting members of the Cavendish, but in truth they were planned and executed as Lady Rutherford performance pieces.

  Rather than casual get-togethers at which to mingle away from the workplace, the regular occasions proved more formal than any weekday routine – from the handwritten invitations stipulating an iron-clad 4.30pm arrival, to Mary’s unilateral announcement of the conclusion, after which she expected a note of thanks to be sent by all attendees. As Oliphant later remembered, the dénouement of Sunday afternoons at Newnham would follow an inevitable course.

  An hour, or a little more later, if it was fine outside, we were asked by Lady Rutherford whether we would like to see the garden, and after a stroll we were led firmly to the door in the outer wall [which opened directly onto Queen’s Road], where we shook hands and departed. If the weather was bad or the light had gone, the end of the occasion was signalled by Lady Rutherford rising and going around the circle bidding us goodbye. There was no opportunity to outstay our welcome.10

  The running sheet for these gatherings was also rigidly prescriptive, and scheduled to allow Ernest his regular Sunday-morning golf round at the nearby Gogmagog Hills course. Sunday-best attire was compulsory for afternoon tea, and guests were greeted at the cottage’s front door by a maid in full Victorian chamber outfit, complete with ankle-length apron and white, lace-fringed cap. They were led past Rutherford’s study – a clutter of books and papers that mirrored his Cavendish office, and which Mary would ruthlessly tidy when it became too great an eyesore – and into a large drawing room that overlooked the slavishly maintained garden. The room was dominated by a concert grand piano, which reflected Mary’s musical preferences, given that her husband’s tastes tended more to military-style marching bands.

  Each visitor was then welcomed by the hosts, and directed to their appropriate place among the arc of prearranged seats. When all were in place, Mary would take up her post on a low chair before a diminutive table and pour the tea from a silver pot. It was a keepsake of which she was demonstrably proud.

  Ernest would sit on the opposite side of the circle and lead the conversation, most often centred on world events, with a decided emphasis on news from the Commonwealth, gleaned from reports in The Times. Shop talk from the Cavendish was not permitted unless a quiet confine could be found beyond Mary’s earshot. Rather, the guests a
ssembled in the drawing room, balancing fine china cups and saucers upon their laps while juggling delicate triangular sandwiches, listened closely as Rutherford marshalled the chat, which was usually interrupted only by his wife’s regular scolding.

  ‘Ern, you’re dribbling,’ she would shrill, or she would rebuff his request for a second cup by noting that Mr Oliphant, or some other guest, ‘hasn’t finished his first yet – so you will wait’. The Rutherfords maintained separate bedrooms at Newnham Cottage, and there was never any physical affection shown between them, but those who saw them together often claimed that they were clearly devoted to one another.

  ‘I don’t know that she was a great conversationalist,’ Elizabeth Cockcroft would recall of Mary Rutherford. ‘People found her difficult to get on with, really.’11

  There was a distinct duality to Mary Rutherford’s manner. It appeared she had developed a strong, combative personality after being brought up by a strict, strident mother and a father who was absent, first through his drinking, then through his premature death. When in the company of Britons, Lady Mary would adopt the countenance of a society matron in keeping with the status her husband’s reputation afforded. However, her demeanour was known to soften markedly when she was providing support and assistance to others – particularly those who were new to England and unfamiliar with its entrenched, class-based customs, like Mark and Rosa Oliphant.

  Upon learning, in 1927, that the latest colonial addition to her husband’s laboratory team had brought with him a shy, equally unworldly wife, Mary Rutherford insisted that the Oliphants become fixtures at Sunday-afternoon tea. With access to her own motor car, she would also routinely offer transport to Rosa Oliphant. Like Elizabeth Cockcroft, who formed a close bond with Rosa, Mary Rutherford took a shine to the young, financially struggling couple from distant South Australia, whose story she herself had lived.

  * * *

  The language, the signage, the cultural and culinary idiosyncrasies of England had been reassuringly recognisable to the Oliphants from the moment they alighted in Liverpool. Cambridge, however, with its medieval rituals and stifling formality, was like nothing they had seen, or prepared for. For that reason, as well as the financial constraints imposed by Mark’s scholarship income, the early years at the Cavendish brought numbing hardship for the young couple.

  Among Cambridge’s protocols was the requirement that all students join a college, provided their chosen institution accepted their application. Oliphant opted for Trinity College, founded by Henry VIII in 1546, which listed Newton, Maxwell and Rayleigh among its notable alumni. Rutherford had been a member during his first stint at Cambridge, as was J.J. Thomson, who in 1927 was Trinity’s master.

  However, college accommodation was restricted to bachelors, and it took some time for the Oliphants to secure modest lodgings suitably close to the Cavendish. In the interim, they made do with temporary accommodation.

  Having spent their early married life in a self-contained wing of Rosa’s family’s large bungalow in the beachside Adelaide suburb of Glenelg, the shock of their new English digs never fully subsided. Their first flat, upstairs on Bateman Street, comprised a bedroom, a small living space and a kitchen that doubled as bathroom. Their kitchen table became a length of board balanced across the bathtub’s edges; the couple had rejected the option of a ‘hip bath’ that could be dragged in front of the fireplace for the ritual Saturday night wash.

  If the conditions were trying, the poverty was worse. Mark’s scholarship granted him £250 per year (around £15,000 today), and when £2 went to weekly rent alongside the annual cost of college fees (£80) and textbooks (£20) it meant less than £50 each week in today’s currency for living costs. Rosa’s attempts to find work were stymied by her lack of qualifications in typing and stenography, the most marketable skills for women in inter-war Cambridge. So instead she set her mind to balancing a fragile household budget. ‘Now dear, it’s your job to make it go round,’ Mark would instruct his wife as he handed her their meagre living allowance.12

  Rosa would stoke the coal fire into life each day, shortly before Mark made the 1.5-kilometre walk from the Cavendish for lunch. Her goal was to create the appearance of a warm, welcoming home for her husband, only to extinguish the fire the moment he returned to work. Coal was expensive, so Rosa spent the hours either side of the midday meal huddled in an overcoat as she went about her domestic chores. On Sundays, that list included dry cleaning Mark’s only suit.

  So bleak was the financial situation in which the couple found themselves that, with their first English winter looming, Oliphant saw no option but to apply for the 1851 Commission’s hardship provision: a supplemental payment of £30, to cover his tuition and other associated costs.

  The memories of these painful early years in Cambridge would forever remain with Rosa, her reticence to spend on non-essential extravagance a characteristic she maintained even as her husband’s career bloomed.

  For Mark, the experience was vastly different. He came to cherish the years he spent at the Cavendish, and not only because of the camaraderie within the laboratory where, despite the evening and weekend curfews, Rosa felt he invested too much time. He also enjoyed the backslapping of Trinity College dinners held in the Great Hall, took up squash – which he played sporadically and unspectacularly in preference to offers from Cockcroft and Blackett to join the laboratory’s hockey team – and would occasionally splurge on tickets to amateur theatre performances and music recitals. Mark and Rosa’s classical tastes were well catered for in a community so strongly steeped in British high culture.

  These rare indulgences, however, were contingent on more than just household expenses and college fees. Rutherford’s steel grip on the Cavendish’s expenditure meant that students were, at times, expected to pay for essential items themselves – forcing Oliphant to dip still further into Rosa’s overstretched household purse.

  * * *

  If Oliphant had imagined, through the years in which his hopes of working alongside Rutherford had fermented, that the Cavendish was some gilded scientific nirvana, he had been disavowed of that idea early. Suggestions that it had evolved little from Thomson’s days were, if anything, generous: others who preceded Oliphant into its hallowed workrooms felt it remained a timeless relic of Maxwell’s original vision.

  Part of its problem was cast in the sculpted flourishes of its minimalist street frontage. The entrance off Free School Lane might have served as a suitably grand statement when designed fifty years earlier, but now stood as an intractable impediment to the installation of large, modern machinery. The electricity supply from an equally antiquated power station on the banks of the River Cam was fluky, and so noisy motor generators had been set up outside the porter’s lodge to feed the laboratory, and putrefy the air. This, in turn, helped ensure that much of the machinery at the cutting-edge research facility continued to be hand-operated. It wasn’t only through caricature that the Cavendish was regularly spoken of as a bastion of ‘string and sealing wax’ experimentation.

  Even as he familiarised himself with the workings of the ‘garage’ and then the upstairs ‘nursery’ – where novice research students were let loose on obsolete or even broken apparatus to guarantee any missteps did not incur costly damage – Oliphant was struck by similarities to his uncle’s backyard repair shop, and the adolescent experimental retreat he had set up beneath the family home at Mitcham.

  Among the purpose-blown glass flasks and precision-made brass calibrators were biscuit tins, some of which housed still smaller cocoa tins to keep vital parts and reagents separated. Rather than using commercial alternatives, the vacuum grease employed to fix stopcocks and ground joints was hand-made through a laborious process that required days of patiently cooking crepe rubber retrieved from inside the hard casings of golf balls. Constant stirring over low heat was required to achieve the desired consistency.

  Vacuum tubes, so essential in the study of ionised gases, underwent initial evacuation t
hrough use of a hand-cranked pump, with the residual gas then absorbed by charcoal cooled through the application of liquid air. This was not the ‘activated’ charcoal that could be purchased, but the Cavendish version, which was made by carbonising coconut shells. And while the trademark crimson Bank of England sealing wax was prized for securing airtight fittings before the invention of plasticine revolutionised the practice, Cavendish members often preferred their own recipes, as prepared by J.J. Thomson’s laboratory technician. The hard and soft versions of the sealant were both made from beeswax and resin among other ingredients, though the identities and proportions of each remained a close-guarded secret.

  Overseeing this all-pervasive thrift was the Cavendish’s chief laboratory assistant Fred Lincoln, an archetypal Dickensian caretaker with a collection of keys for every known cupboard and ‘a moustache with wax-twisted ends which made him resemble a recruiting sergeant from the Edwardian era’.13 Such was Lincoln’s devotion to his task that he would stand at almost full salute when he encountered Rutherford on the workshop floor. He had received his start under Thomson, and had earned his stripes guarding the materials of everyday science with a zealotry usually reserved for micrograms of radium. He measured lengths of electrical cable and rubber tubing down to the prescribed inch, and hand-rationed issues of screws.

  ‘He was shrewd, and had a good knowledge of human beings,’ Oliphant later recalled. ‘On one occasion, working after hours, we needed some tungsten wire. The relevant cupboard was locked, but we managed to pull it from the wall, take off the back, abstract the wire and replace the cupboard. We thought this had gone undetected, but when some time later we tried to repeat the performance, we found the cupboard screwed to the wall from the inside.’14

  However, the parsimony that pervaded the entire laboratory stemmed from the man who loomed larger than life over every aspect of the Cavendish and its personnel: Ernest Rutherford. Raised in colonial poverty, schooled amid rudimentary facilities and with his most recent forays into academic administration tinged by the privations of war and then the gathering clouds of global depression, Rutherford preached frugality and self-sufficiency.