Lindemann
Lindemann, Frederick Alexander.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Churchill’s science adviser.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: The Prof.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 5th April 1886, in Baden-Baden, Germany.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 3rd July 1957, in Oxford, England. Aged 71.
DISCIPLINE: Physicist.
FIELD: Physics and politics.
LANGUAGE: English and German.
PARENTS: Father, A F Lindemann, mother, Olga Noble.
SIBLINGS: 2 brothers, Charles and James, 1 sister, name unknown.
SPOUSE: None.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Preparatory school, Scotland; Preparatory school, Darmstadt, Germany; High school, Darmstadt, Germany; University of Berlin, Germany.
MAJOR WORK: ‘Quantum Theory’, 1931.
LIFE AND TIMES: Together with the leading physicist Nernst*, Lindemann worked on quantum theory at the University of Berlin and soon established a reputation as a brilliant young scientist. In 1911, he was invited to act as secretary to the Solvay Scientific Conference.
When World War I began in 1914 and the following year, he was attached to the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, where a group of young, talented scientists were working. He came up with the idea of detecting aircraft by infra-red light, but was before his time, since there were no techniques or research available to take his idea any further.
His best-known work was on the mathematical problem involved when an aircraft went into a spin. Lindemann was sure he had a solution and volunteered to prove it in the air. After taking flying instruction, he carried out a series of dangerous flights and was able to memorize the relevant figures on the aircraft's instruments and to write them down afterwards.
Before his experiments, spins were thought to be caused by faults in the design of the aircraft. Lindemann proved that any plane could spin and that, if there was height to spare, a good pilot could recover. This concept led to the development of a new maneuvre used by fighter pilots. While he was at the Farnborough establishment, another important development by Lindemann was the design and testing of stabilized bomb sights.
After the war, in 1919 a fellow scientist, Henry Tizard, encouraged Lindemann to apply for a chair at Oxford. Although very young for the job, Lindemann became Professor of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society*.
In 1921, after playing tennis with Clementine Churchill, he met her husband, the politician and future war leader, Churchill*. The two men were very different characters, but the teetotal, non-smoking, vegetarian scientist became a friend of the out-going, brandy-drinking politician, rarely seen without a cigar.
At the time of Lindemann's appointment, Oxford had a poor reputation for the
sciences and the Clarendon Laboratory was run-down, with no research staff and lacking even mains electricity.
With Lindemann as Director, a new building, new equipment and staff were found. He recruited top class people, many of them Jewish scientists from Germany. Einstein*, who was an old acquaintance of Lindemann's, made several visits in the early 1930's.
Lindemann's most important contribution during the years between the two world wars was in his job as scientific adviser to Churchill, who led the campaign for re-armament in preparation for possible war against Germany. In spite of his right-wing political views, Lindemann shared Churchill's distrust of Germany, as well as his irritation with certain British aristocrats and politicians who were preaching appeasement with Hitler.
Churchill valued Lindemann for his ability to analyse the German threat and to produce actual statistics about German forces and equipment. Lindemann became a vital part of the group of people around Churchill who were doing their best to push the government into war preparations.
In 1935, Churchill insisted that Lindemann should become a member of the Tizard committee for the scientific survey of air defence. Unfortunately, Lindemann's irritating personality caused a breach with Tizard which never healed.
When war broke out in 1939, Lindemann became Churchill's personal assistant
at the Admiralty and head of his statistical department, jobs that he held onto after Churchill became the British Prime Minister in May 1940 and he was made Viscount Cherwell in 1941.
Although not a member of the War Cabinet, Lindemann remained a close influential adviser to Churchill right through the war years. He had a talent for translating great blocks of information into a clear and understandable form. This was a great help to Churchill, allowing him to absorb large amounts of data in a relatively easy way.
Lindemann produced reports on enemy resources, allied shipping losses, weapons
production and food imports. He was given the job of checking statistics from other departments, a job which made him even more unpopular, but which directly affected war policy.
Lindemann was responsible for finding ways to interfere with the wireless beam which the German night bombers were using for location finding in 1940 and he supported research into microwave radar, which led to a device used as a navigational aid by allied night bombers.
Not always infallible, Lindemann was badly wrong when he overestimated the damage that would be inflicted by area bombing in Germany. He was wrong again when he refused to take the German V2 rocket bombs seriously and he was blamed for delaying the use of tinfoil strips (‘chaff’) to confuse enemy radar.
In 1945, when Churchill lost power at the end of the war, Lindemann went back to Oxford and while he was there, was strongly in favour of the development of the atomic bomb. When Churchill came back to power in 1951, Lindemann supported him in government for the next two years, during which time he managed to transfer the control of atomic energy from the Ministry of Supply, which he regarded as being
staffed by ‘incompetent dullards’, to an independent authority.
In 1953, Lindemann resigned from his government job and took up his professorship again, finally retiring in 1956.
ASSESSMENT: Lindemann didn’t fulfil his early promise of scientific brilliance in
pure research, his most significant scientific contribution being the creation of an internationally respected scientific research centre at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He got an Oxford job Schrodinger*
ONELINER: FA Lindemann, Churchill’s scientific adviser
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Smith, Frederick W, The Prof in Two Worlds, Collins, London, 1961