John Ziman

No scientist worth his research grant really wants to conceal his discoveries from the world at large. Many non-scientists are curious to know something of the latest scientific discoveries. There would seem to be quite enough moral earnestness and prospects of profit to get this gap bridged. Alas, the chasm is wide and deep, especially where it guards the mysterious heights of modern physics. As some recent television programmes have demonstrated, even a skilful web of visual aids and journalistic conceits may not succeed in establishing a connection between specialist and general knowledge of atoms, particles, forces and fields.

Name the greatest Russian physicist of this century. The public vote would go for Andrei Sakharov – but for moral stature rather than for contributions to knowledge. A generation ago, Pyotr Kapitza would have been supported by many, in the mistaken belief that he was the master mind behind the Russian Bomb. Among physicists, however, Ley Davidovitch Landau would stand preeminent. He ought, by rights, to be still with us, for he was born in 1908: but a ghastly car accident in 1962 destroyed his intellectual powers and in 1968 he died.

‘Reallocation of Responsibilities of Research Councils: Royal Society opposes Reform’ was probably the runner-up to ‘Small Earthquake in Peru: Not Many Dead’ in the famous competition for the least sensational newspaper headline. Nevertheless, here we are, a generation into the nuclear era. The scientific bureaucrat can no longer be laughed off as a cross between Professor Branestawm and Dr Strangelove. Exactly how scientific expertise should be employed in the affairs of the nation is a central question of modern politics.

There was a time when the only experts on matters related to nuclear fission were physicists. During the war, this expertise was extended to a highly selected corps of engineers. Nowadays, we need economists, industrial managers, medical specialists, military strategists and diplomatists to explain what is going on. There was a time when the whole affair was safely confined within the government apparatus of a few super-powers. Nowadays it spreads across the world, not only to Japan, India and China but also to smaller nations such as the Philippines and Israel, and has become a major factor of international commerce and private finance. The fiefdoms of the ‘nuclear barons’ extend from the uranium mines of Western Australia to missile warheads targeted across the North Pole. They influence, and are influenced by, the price of sugar in Brazil and the political status of the Golan Heights. They are prime movers of the world of today.

‘No one will take me seriously,’ complains the scientific pioneer, exploring far ahead of the pack. We fully sympathise: but it is not easy to ‘take seriously’ a surmise that seems wildly at variance with our comfortable notions of reality. ‘The Earth going round the sun? Fiddlesticks.’ ‘Men descended from Apes? Pshaw!’ ‘Drifting continents? Whatever next?’ How deplorable to scoff, and yet how difficult to pick out the one such idea in a thousand that is not, after all, as wrongheaded as it first seems.