The Basis of Everything
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As a high school student who found fourth-year physics complex and daunting, I owe much gratitude to the many who helped transmute this project from notion to completion over the course of a couple of years.
From the outset, Cheryl Hoskin, Lee Hayes and Marie Larsen at the University of Adelaide’s Rare Books and Special Collections library were unstintingly helpful and endlessly accommodating, even while dealing with the disruption brought by major building renovations.
Professor Malcolm Longair, former head of Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory and now its historical curator, has been hugely generous with his time and his insights. His book Maxwell’s Enduring Legacy: A Scientific History of the Cavendish Laboratory proved an invaluable resource.
Likewise, Dr Robert Whitworth – a retired member of the University of Birmingham’s physics staff and overseer of the department’s historical collection – willingly shared archival material as well as his knowledge of Edgbaston campus. I am also grateful for the assistance provided by staff at Birmingham’s Cadbury Research Library Special Collections and London’s National Archives.
In Australia, I am thankful to Monica Oliphant for welcoming me into her home and recounting memories of her esteemed father-in-law. The miracles performed by Scott Forbes and Emma Dowden in editing a manuscript that, in many places, was as impenetrable as a heavy metal nucleus were extraordinary. I also remain indebted to Helen Littleton at HarperCollins for her enthusiasm and encouragement throughout this project, and to my agent, Jacinta di Mase, for her wise counsel and ready support.
Given that researching and writing a book can be a most solitary discipline, I can’t express sufficient thanks to my mother, sisters, nephew and niece for providing regular nutritional and emotional sustenance, as well as to my brother-in-law, Ken Lajoie, for intrepidly wading through the manuscript’s woolly first draft and kindly claiming that he, rather like those who assessed my school physics exams, could see the destination I was trying to reach even if the means of getting there took some deciphering.
Andrew Ramsey
June 2019
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Like Mark Oliphant, ANDREW RAMSEY was born in South Australia, and he currently lives beside a school that the young Oliphant attended in Adelaide. He has been a journalist for thirty years, based in Adelaide and Melbourne, and has had his articles published in major national newspapers in Australia, the United Kingdom and India. He has also worked as a political speechwriter and in corporate communications roles in universities. He is the author of The Wrong Line and Under the Southern Cross – The Heroics and Heartbreak of the Ashes in Australia.
COPYRIGHT
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First published in Australia in 2019
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Copyright © Andrew Ramsey 2019
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Cover image: Cavendish Laboratory staff, Cambridge, 1932, with Ernest Rutherford highlighted in front row and Mark Oliphant in second row, courtesy Oliphant Papers, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Adelaide Library, Australia