Blackett: Physics, War, and Politics in the Twentieth Century , Mary Jo Nye Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004. $39.95 (255 pp.). ISBN 0-674-01548-7
Patrick M. S. Blackett (1897–1974) was among a generation of outstanding British physicists, five of whom won Nobel prizes in physics in the 1940s and early 1950s. Blackett won his in 1948 for improving the Wilson cloud chamber and for the discoveries he made with the improved device in the 1930s. In 1947 he announced, and then retracted, a new universal law uniting gravity with magnetism. He developed new magnetometers that would be important in establishing the geological theory of continental drift and was a key figure in British wartime operational research. He was also interested in what were considered to be old-fashioned problems, such as the measurement of specific heats.
In Blackett: Physics, War, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Mary Jo Nye, a well-known historian of science, has produced for a general readership a splendid biography of this remarkably multifaceted man. Of particular note are her discussions on Blackett’s new universal law of nature and her analysis of Blackett’s looks, leadership style, presence, friendships, and connections.
Blackett was an example of a scientist recruited from the English elite. He started his career in the Royal Navy, going through the reformed Edwardian naval education system, designed to create an officer corps knowledgeable in science and engineering. He served at sea during World War I. Afterward, he was sent to the University of Cambridge, where many other young naval officers went to complete their education. He resigned from the navy in 1919 and stayed at the Cavendish Laboratory until the early 1930s. Thereafter, he held chairs and headed departments at Birkbeck College, London, from 1933 to 1937; the University of Manchester from 1937 to 1953; and Imperial College London from 1953 to 1963.
Blackett was a commanding patrician figure. His demeanor is often traced back to his naval experience. For some, he recalled the radical intelligentsia of the 1920s, yet he was also the “archbishop of science,” as the obituary in the Times (London) described him. His life was full of such seeming contrasts. In the 1960s he was the president of the Royal Society and, simultaneously, an adviser to the Ministry of Technology. Although a lifelong socialist, he advocated a greater role for business in research and development. Despite being one of Britain’s leading nuclear physicists, he did not work on the British bomb project during World War II; he did not go to the Los Alamos laboratory, nor to Harwell, Woolwich, or Aldermaston laboratory. He opposed Britain’s development of an atomic bomb, and his Fear, War, and the Bomb: The Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy (Whittlesey House, 1949) was the public expression of his objections to a key policy of state. However, Blackett was not the only politically committed, prominent British physicist of the period: Along with C. P. Snow, he was among the most influential scientific intellectuals of the postwar years.
Blackett’s voice was a distinctive one among scientists of the left on the subject of war. He was one of the very few socialists who concerned themselves with military strategy. Blackett, who was certainly a premature antifascist, was to call himself a “premature military realist.” As Nye correctly notes, Blackett risked a great deal by taking unpopular stances on defense matters. He was indeed skeptical—certainly ambivalent—about claims by scientists and others for the transformative role of science and technology in war. In his mind, operational research, rather than R&D, was often a better way to make more effective weapons. Another example of his realism was his analysis of the role of science and technology for developing nations. He argued the need for poor countries to adopt old technology rather than new science.
Blackett was an original thinker on issues involving science and public policy; he was driven not just by a commitment to science but also by a particular political commitment—to socialism. Nye’s biography is, as many are, in deep sympathy with its attractive subject. The author adds considerably to Bernard Lovell’s memoir P. M. S. Blackett: A Biographical Memoir (Royal Society, 1976) and a fascinating recent collection of essays, Patrick Blackett: Sailor, Scientist, and Socialist (Frank Cass, 2002), edited by Peter Hore. Yet Blackett’s distinctive and critical ideas about science, war, and politics, particularly in Britain, still remain to be critically explored. One is left wondering what less-sympathetic biographers would have to say about him.
