The Basis of Everything

by Andrew Ramsey

  Where he could be, forever, with nature.

  * * *

  ‘I regret it,’ Oliphant reflected of his decision to return to Australia, more than thirty years after he left Britain. ‘I think I was a fool to come back, from the intellectual and professional point of view. If you were to ask me . . . what part of my life have I enjoyed most, or what part of my life was most creative, then I’d have to say the Cambridge period.

  ‘That was . . . the happiest time of my life. Because of the whole spirit of the place and, of course, the attitude of Rutherford and his friendship. And the fact that one was discovering, every day, new things about nature.’3

  Rather like those early revelations about the invisible bonds that connect the building blocks of the universe, the forces that united Ernest Rutherford and Mark Oliphant were improbable, yet irresistible.

  Rutherford emerged from the volcanic plains and flax fields of rural New Zealand to not only shock the staid old world of European physics, but also to dictate its direction as expedition leader on the last great voyage of scientific discovery. Oliphant followed him – on the strength of a fleeting, wordless encounter in the colonial afterthought of Adelaide – to Cambridge University and the Cavendish Laboratory: the epicentre of scientific enterprise in an era that would reshape life ever after.

  Their time together, from Oliphant’s arrival until Rutherford’s needlessly premature death, was comparatively brief. It spanned barely a decade, a period of global depression and radical upheaval. But from the field of nuclear physics that Rutherford so famously founded, and that Oliphant too pursued with almost fanatical zeal, came the innovations that define twenty-first-century life. Those advances can be traced back to the moment in 1917 when Rutherford’s team successfully split the atom, and they vindicate his celebrated catchphrase that ‘all science is either physics or stamp collecting’.4

  ‘People show anger with science for developing nuclear power,’ Oliphant reasoned to a popular weekly British news magazine in 1945. ‘“How soon”, they ask, “before this terrible force annihilates us?” They should instead be asking, “How soon can it be made to serve us, end our drudgery, lift our loads?” We are already able to produce from a given weight of matter a million times more energy than has ever been obtained from it before.’5

  It was not only its potential to deliver seemingly limitless resources of energy that ensured nuclear physics changed, irrevocably, the modern world. Without it, there would no radiotherapy in hospital cancer wards, nor the range of diagnostic imaging devices that can scan every part of the inner body without invasive surgery. The cathode tubes that delivered pictures in analogue television sets were, in essence, miniature particle accelerators. The digital flat screens that replaced them, and that are now the cornerstone of communication on mobile phones, computers and tablets, use technology sourced from the quantum theories spawned by Rutherford’s work.

  The worldwide web emerged from a small academic research tool devised by scientists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, the organisation that later developed the Large Hadron Collider) in Switzerland. Vital measurements of environmental and climactic changes from all parts of the globe are collated, around the clock, using accelerator mass spectrometry – by the modern descendants of tools integral to research at the Cavendish, and other physics laboratories that followed.

  It was also physics that made possible nuclear weaponry, which renders all these advances potential hostage to a handful of political leaders. It’s that final reality that came to haunt scientists, like Oliphant, who earnestly thought the development of such brutal weapons would rid the planet of global conflagrations. They enabled the bomb’s birth in the naïve belief that, once the world had witnessed its terrifying power, no regime – not even one espousing Hitler’s psychotic disregard for humanity – would risk initiating conflict, in the knowledge that reprisals would bring extinction.

  The cessation of global warfare since Japan was bombed in 1945 might circumstantially suggest that Oliphant and his brethren of true believers have been vindicated. The reality, however, is that the weapon supposed to act as the ultimate deterrent has instead been wantonly brandished as the definitive threat. Seven decades have passed since the world’s nuclear stockpile stood at zero after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and since Oliphant and Oppenheimer sought to seal a weapons pact at the United Nations. Subsequently eight other sovereign states have developed bomb capabilities. The global stockpile, which peaked at an estimated 70,000 warheads in the mid-1980s, currently stands around 15,000.6

  Rather than safeguard the planet, the bomb has placed its very future at the whim of a handful of warmongers – some of whom are demonstrably more stable than others. As North Korea publicly reaffirmed its aim to join that nuclear fraternity in 2017, United States President Donald Trump – commander-in-chief of the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal, behind Russia’s – warned that any strike against American sovereign territory ‘will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen’.7 Of this fire and fury we continue to live in fear.

  None of this calamity loomed on that drizzly October morning in 1927 when Mark Oliphant was first introduced to Ernest Rutherford in the dark confines of the Cavendish Laboratory, two men from the far side of the world, neither knowing how that moment would bend the future. Yet it was the very commonality of their colonial pasts and their mutual devotion to science, at times to the detriment of those around them, that brought their relationship to bloom.

  As twenty-something young men, they had both left behind outdoor boyhoods spent exploring untamed surrounds, mastering backyard engineering, and experiencing nature’s raw beauty. Those experiences were tinged, on occasion, by tragic realities. But as well as being kindred souls, they were rare gems hewn from unique environments.

  Rutherford, the Nobel laureate and British lord who would rest forever within the sacred heart of London’s Westminster Abbey, was the world’s most famous scientist when Oliphant arrived at Cambridge, justifiably daunted by the great man’s reputation and aura. However, from that initial encounter, such an easy, sincere rapport developed that Oliphant became the master’s master-craftsman, as well as his trusted laboratory partner, personal confidant and loyal companion. For all that Oliphant would achieve as a decisive and possibly divisive wartime figure, and as a public intellectual thereafter, it was his time with Rutherford that he held dearest. And most poignantly missed.

  Their journey carried them from the distant Antipodes to the heart of matter, from the coal-cloaked valleys of Snowdonia to the golden age of physics. They were remarkable men who found each other at a most extraordinary time, and gave their gifts, without reservation, to their beloved science.

  The world remains forever changed by their partnership.

  PHOTO SECTION

  Ernest Rutherford in New Zealand in 1892, when he was twenty-one. Around this time he he became a boarder at the home of Mary Newton in Christchurch, and was studying for his first degree at Canterbury College. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Rutherford in his laboratory at McGill University, Canada, 1905. The white cuffs beneath his jacket sleeves were borrowed from colleague Otto Hahn after the photographer said Rutherford did not appear sufficiently dignified. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Ernest Rutherford at the wheel of his first car. The 14-horsepower Wolseley Siddeley tourer was purchased with money that accompanied his Nobel Prize in 1908, and allowed his family to travel regularly between Manchester and their holiday home in North Wales. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  The entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, on Free School Lane. Rutherford’s office was located on the second floor, while the ‘garage’ experimental space was in the basement and the ‘nursery’ training rooms were on the top level. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  An aerial view of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, taken from the bell tower of St Bene’t’s Churc
h. At left, fronting Free School Lane, is the Rayleigh Wing. The entrance gates to the laboratory are at far right. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  The internal courtyard of the Cavendish Laboratory, as it would have appeared when Rutherford first attended Cambridge in 1895. The archway at bottom left connects to Free School Lane; the steps inside the arch lead to the building’s main entrance. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  An academic portrait of Mark Oliphant at Adelaide University, taken in the 1920s. Upon completing his honours degree in 1922, Oliphant worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in the university’s Physics Department. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Harold ‘Baron’ Oliphant (centre) with his sons (from left) Mark, Keith, Nigel and Donald (the youngest son, Roland, was absent). The photograph was taken in 1931 after Mark returned from Cambridge University, having earned his PhD at the Cavendish Laboratory. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Ernest Rutherford at Manchester University with the apparatus he used in 1918 to fire alpha particles at nitrogen atoms. In doing so, he became the first person to split an atom, a breakthrough that heralded the birth of nuclear physics. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Rutherford, standing next to a seated Albert Einstein, addresses the inaugural fundraising event for the Academic Assistance Council, at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 3 October 1933. The council was formed to help European scientists escape Nazi persecution. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Celyn, Rutherford’s holiday cottage in the Snowdonia region of North Wales. The stone farmhouse was the site of many holidays and weekend retreats for the Rutherford and Oliphant families. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Rosa and Mark Oliphant taking the sun on the front terrace of Celyn, Mark immersed in a book while his wife combines reading and knitting. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Rutherford with Niels Bohr and (left to right) Mary Rutherford, Rosa Oliphant and Margrethe Bohr, in the garden of the Rutherfords’ Cambridge home, Newnham Cottage. The photograph was probably taken by Mark Oliphant in 1930. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Rutherford at the beach, possibly during a family visit to England’s Dorset coast in 1931. He believed that holidays should be spent away from urban environments and that a true vacation required a return to nature. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  The Cavendish Laboratory team in 1932, the so-called golden year. Nine eventual Nobel Prize winners are present, eight of them in the front row, including Rutherford (centre), J.J. Thomson (with hat in hand), James Chadwick (third from left) and John Cockcroft (far right). Oliphant stands behind Thomson’s right shoulder, with Ernest Walton to his left. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Rutherford at the Cavendish in 1932 with researcher Jack Ratcliffe. The illuminated sign above him warns visitors that there is sound-sensitive counting equipment nearby. It was also a not-so-subtle dig at Rutherford’s thunderous manner. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  John Cockcroft wearing headphones while counting particles at the Cavendish Laboratory. Cockcroft’s work with Ernest Walton would result in the first artificial disintegration of a nucleus, which proved Einstein’s famous E = mc2 equation and paved the way for the atomic bomb. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  From his ‘observation tent’, Ernest Walton monitors the release of fragments from atoms disintegrated by the particle accelerator he designed and built with John Cockcroft (in background, at left). The results this machine delivered earned the pair the Nobel Prize for Physics, and marked the dawn of ‘big science’. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Rutherford with his early mentor J.J. Thomson at the Cavendish in 1933. Thomson was Cavendish director when Rutherford arrived from New Zealand in 1895, and held the position until Rutherford succeeded him in 1919. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Ernest Rutherford (standing) and Mark Oliphant (facing him) presenting a lecture to the Royal Institution in London, 1934. Their public demonstration of atoms splitting was the culmination of the pair’s collaborative work, and a high point of Oliphant’s Cavendish career. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Mark and Rosa Oliphant’s son Geoffrey aged two, in 1933, shortly before he died. His death haunted Mark, who was overseas at the time, and forever tainted Rosa’s memories of Cambridge. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Mark and Rosa Oliphant with their adopted son Michael, in North Wales in 1937. The photograph was taken during a trip to the beach around the time Oliphant ended his professional association with Rutherford and the Cavendish. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  The 1-million-volt machine Oliphant sourced from Philips in the Netherlands and had assembled in Cavendish’s high-tension laboratory, which opened in 1937. The ‘space-age’ apparatus delivered huge voltages and allowed for more powerful particle disintegration. (Cambridge Digital Library)

  Peto, the Oliphant family home at Barnt Green in Worcestershire, England. The Oliphants had the modern extension added to the property’s original gatekeeper’s lodge, and Mark built the garden retaining wall and the paving. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls (left and centre), authors of the memorandum that first foresaw the possibility of an atomic bomb, with John Cockcroft (right). Frisch and Peierls fled Hitler’s tyranny in Europe, and would prove vital to the Allies’ Second World War victory. (Alamy)

  Oliphant at University of California’s Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in September 1941. His visit to the United States that year, and the pact he forged with Ernest Lawrence, would lead directly to the creation of the Manhattan Project. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Oliphant (left) and Ernest Lawrence in front of the 184-inch cyclotron magnet at Berkeley on 22 September 1941, during Oliphant’s bomb-advocacy visit to the United States. Their friendship was decisive in the race to build an atomic bomb. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  The colossal Oak Ridge complex in Tennessee, hub of the Manhattan Project’s uranium-enrichment program. The facility would eventually house more than 50,000 workers, yet its purpose remained unknown to the outside world until war’s end. (Alamy)

  The Trinity Test, the first ever detonation of a nuclear bomb, in the New Mexico desert on 16 July, 1945. Head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, described the test as ‘successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of anyone’. (Alamy)

  The shattered remains of Hiroshima, Japan, after the bombing of the city in August 1945. Oliphant was forever troubled by the impact of the weapon he helped create, and argued it should never have been deployed against civilian populations. (Alamy)

  Mark Oliphant, John Cockcroft (centre) and J. Robert Oppenheimer at a nuclear physics conference at Birmingham University, September 1948. Cockcroft became leader of Britain’s post-war atomic program, while Oppenheimer was ultimately stripped of his US security clearance. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  Rosa, Michael, Mark and Vivian Oliphant aboard the Orcades in July 1950, leaving England for Australia. After twenty-three years abroad, Mark had been lured home to help establish the Australian National University in Canberra. (Oliphant Papers, University of Adelaide)

  ENDNOTES

  Prologue

  1.‘A Famous Scientist’, The Register (Adelaide), 4 September 1925, p 11.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Newspaper clippings, undated and unattributed, Oliphant Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Adelaide, Series 24.

  4.Stewart Cockburn and David Ellyard, Oliphant, Axiom Books, Adelaide, 1981, p 24.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Mark Oliphant, Rutherford: Recollections of the Cambridge Days, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1972, p 18.

  7.Robyn Williams, interview with Mark Oliphant, The Science Show, ABC Radio, Sydney, 1986.

  8.Robin Hughes, interview with Mark Oliphant, Australian Biography, 20 January 1992, www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/oliphant/interview1.html.
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br />   9.Ibid.

  1. Colonial Boys

  1.‘South Australian Association for Emigration’, The Times (London), 1 July 1834, p 4.

  2.Philippa Mein Smith, A Concise History of New Zealand, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 2005, p 56.

  3.R.M. Gibbs, Under the Burning Sun, Southern Heritage, Adelaide, 2013, p 229.

  4.John Campbell, Rutherford: Scientist Supreme, AAS Publications, Christchurch, 1999, p 13.

  5.Robin Hughes, op cit.

  6.Jan Polkinghorne, Mylor: Valley of Dreams, Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide, 1991, p 118.

  7.Robin Hughes, op cit.

  8.Mark Oliphant, speech at Ballarat College, December 1967, Oliphant Collection, Series 4.

  9.Stewart Cockburn, interview with Keith Oliphant, Oliphant Collection, Series 26.

  10.Campbell, op cit, p 13.

  11.Robin Hughes, op cit.

  2. The World Awaits

  1.Cockburn, interview with Keith Oliphant, Oliphant Collection, Series 26.

  2.Robin Hughes, op cit.

  3.Cockburn, interview with Keith Oliphant, Oliphant Collection, Series 26.

  4.Campbell, op cit, p 56.

  5.Mark Oliphant, speech at Unley High School 75th jubilee dinner, 18 May 1985, Oliphant Collection, Series 4.