As promised on the book’s back cover, Crystal Clear: The Autobiographies of Sir Lawrence & Lady Bragg “takes you behind . . . the life of one of the most prominent scientists of the twentieth century,” William Lawrence Bragg (commonly referred to as Lawrence), and features unpublished autobiographies by him and his wife Alice, “a public figure in her own right.” Intended only for the family, the autobiographies contain numerous insights into Lawrence’s science, Alice’s public service, and their family. The volume was edited by crystallographer A. M. Glazer and by the Braggs’ daughter Patience Thomson, who provides stories that illuminate and enchant. Here I concentrate on Lawrence’s account.
The story of the collaboration of Lawrence and his father, physicist William Henry Bragg (commonly referred to as William), has been outside the mainstream; their work as pioneers of x-ray crystallography has been important to all the sciences but central to none. To survive as a discipline, crystallography had to establish its own international union, conferences, and journals—the field only became prominent with the establishment of molecular biology. Most recently—in biographies, in centenary celebrations, and during the 2014 International Year of Crystallography—the Braggs’ scientific story became known, but the family background is still hazy. Most important, therefore, is the light this book sheds on the events that Lawrence experienced during a life that appeared unendingly triumphant.
In 1885, 23-year-old William, a new graduate from the University of Cambridge, was appointed a professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Adelaide in distant Australia. There he married a daughter of the local chief scientist, whose family would provide Lawrence with his favorite childhood experiences. When Lawrence’s elbow was broken in an accident, he became one of the first in Australia to be x-rayed, a technology that would come to dominate his life.
Lawrence attended the prestigious secondary school St Peter’s College, where he was promoted to higher and higher grades, which isolated him from his peers. He enrolled at Adelaide, where most of the classes he attended were taught by his father. In 1908 he graduated with first-class honors in mathematics. When William took his family to England the next year, Lawrence went to Cambridge to study mathematics but was persuaded by his father to transfer to physics, and he again graduated with a first. Things of great importance happened to him at Cambridge; for example, he became a member of a small group of adventurous friends, the closest of whom was Cecil Hopkinson. Later, Cecil would be killed in World War I and Lawrence would marry Cecil’s cousin, Alice Hopkinson.
In 1912 Lawrence became a research student in the Cavendish Laboratory: “It was a sad place at that time. There were too many young researchers . . . too few ideas for them to work on, too little money and too little apparatus.” Then Max von Laue’s paper on the diffraction of x rays by zincblende (ZnS) appeared, and William discussed it with his son. Lawrence conceived of the idea that the spots observed by von Laue were due to the reflection of x rays by sheets of atoms in the crystal; Bragg’s law and the structures of ZnS and other crystals followed.
William used his son’s insight to study x rays but he soon joined Lawrence in spectrometric studies of crystals. Confusion then emerged: Credit and speaking invitations were given to William, and thereafter their separate and combined achievements were universally misunderstood. It was not an easy time for Lawrence; Bragg’s law is singular, after all, not plural!
Then came World War I, which halted their research. Lawrence was offered a secret assignment to develop “sound ranging,” a French idea of listening to the sound of gun firings to determine the location of the hidden German weapons that were devastating Allied forces on the western front. Against all odds he succeeded, and sound ranging played a crucial role in the subsequent Allied victory. Lawrence was awarded a Military Cross and elected as an officer of the Order of the British Empire, but the story has been unappreciated until recently.
Good news arrived in the midst of the war: Lawrence and his father were awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics. However, the war would also claim the lives of Lawrence’s younger brother, Bob, and best friend, Cecil. Furthermore, it is now recognized that pretty much anyone close to the front line for an extended period, as Lawrence was, experienced war trauma that had ongoing consequences. Later he had several nervous breakdowns, and he was diffident and insecure in personal relations. I have found no indication that Lawrence was accorded any understanding for his condition.
For those times he underwent a nervous breakdown, he relied greatly on his wife. They met at Cambridge; Alice completed her studies before she accepted Lawrence’s proposal. She recalled that he was shy and serious minded but had a subtle sense of humor. Lawrence’s mother warned Alice that “life would not always be easy. You must make the running, my dear . . . as I have always had to do with Dad [William].”
An inexperienced professor, Lawrence succeeded Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester in 1919. The demobilized students were difficult, and a vile series of anonymous letters drove Lawrence to a nervous breakdown. However, time healed those wounds. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, his Manchester School was born, and his staff was supportive. There were also lighter moments, as when Alice put a goldfish in each finger bowl at dinner. Lawrence also provides extensive accounts of family holidays, research on the silicates, another nervous breakdown, and much more.
When Rutherford died unexpectedly at Cambridge in 1937, Lawrence again succeeded him, this time as Cavendish Professor. But again he was unwelcome, for crystallography was seen as an unacceptable replacement for nuclear physics. And again Lawrence would ultimately triumph. After World War II, subjects hitherto attention-starved began to prosper: among them, radio astronomy, electron microscopy, and metal physics. “But probably the work which in future years will be regarded as the outstanding contribution of the Cavendish Laboratory in these after-war years was the start of the investigation of biological molecules by X-rays” by Max Perutz, John Kendrew, Francis Crick, James Watson, and others. Family matters and delightful sketches about Lawrence fill the subsequent pages, until Lawrence’s final appointment as director of the Royal Institution.
But this account “remained unfinished,” the editors write, “probably because when he subsequently moved to the Royal Institution in 1954 he walked into a maelstrom left by the departure of [Edward] Andrade.” Lawrence had to work hard to sort out the problems, which he did to great effect, although he sometimes found himself snubbed by members of the Royal Society, which greatly upset him. Lawrence retired in 1966 and died in 1971.
John Jenkin is an emeritus scholar in the department of archaeology and history at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son (Oxford University Press, 2011.)
