Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell

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Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell PC CH (April 5, 1886–July 3, 1957) was an English physicist who became an influential scientific adviser to the British government and a close associate of Winston Churchill. He advocated the wartime carpet bombing of German cities, and was a strong doubter of the existence of the Nazi "V" weapons program.

Contents

[edit] Life

[edit] Early life, family and personality

Frederick was the second of three sons of Adolphus Frederick Lindemann (1846–1927) a German from the Palatinate who had emigrated to Britain in his 20s and become naturalised.[1] Frederick was born in Baden-Baden in Germany where his American mother, Olga Noble the widow of a wealthy banker, was taking "the cure". Lindemann always regretted his German birth[citation needed] . After schooling in Scotland and Darmstadt, he attended the University of Berlin as a Ph.D. student of Walther Nernst. As a physicist at the Sorbonne he carried out research that confirmed theories first put forward by Albert Einstein, on specific heats at very low temperatures.[2]

Lindemann was a precise, austere, teetotal, vegetarian, non-smoker, though Churchill would sometimes induce him to take a glass of brandy. An excellent pianist and keen tennis player, he was later to compete at Wimbledon.[2]

[edit] World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, Lindemann was playing tennis in Germany and had to leave in haste to avoid internment. However, he had no success in securing a commission in the British armed forces and so, in 1915, he joined the staff of the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough. He developed a mathematical theory of aircraft spin recovery, and to prove it, learned to fly, testing the theory on himself;[3] as of 2006, the method is still used. Prior to his development of this method spinning an aircraft was almost invariably fatal.

[edit] Oxford

In 1919 Lindemann was appointed professor of experimental philosophy at Oxford University and director of the Clarendon Laboratory, largely on the recommendation of Henry Tizard who had been a colleague in Berlin.[2] In 1919, Lindemann was one of the first people to suggest that in the Solar Wind particles of both polarities, protons as well as electrons, come from the Sun.[4] He was probably not aware that Kristian Birkeland had made the same prediction three years earlier in 1916.[citation needed]

Lindemann's political views were, in modern terms, conservative and he was active in the opposition to the UK General Strike of 1926 mobilising the reluctant staff of the Clarendon to produce copies of Churchill's anti-strike newspaper, the British Gazette. However, unlike many contemporary conservatives he was alarmed and fearful of political developments in Germany (see Events preceding World War II in Europe).[2]

He began pressing for a more determined national action on air defence. He became one of a number of experts who gave advice to Winston Churchill in the 1930s when the latter was out of office and leading a campaign for rearmament. One of his students at this time was R. V. Jones who would also go on to work in wartime defence science.[2]

During the mid-1930's Lindemann successfully helped a number of German Jewish physicists, primarily at the University of Gottingen, emigrate to England to work in the Clarendon Laboratory.[5] Several of these German physicists subsequently worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.[citation needed]

[edit] World War II

When Churchill became Prime Minister, he appointed him as the British government's leading scientific adviser, with David Bensusan-Butt as his private secretary,[citation needed] and later to the ministerial post of Paymaster-General. He would hold this office again in Churchill's peacetime administration. At this point Lindemann was known to many simply as the Prof.[2] Churchill described him as 'the scientific lobe of my brain', and trusted him absolutely.[citation needed]

Lindemann established a special statistical branch within the government, constituted from subject specialists, and reporting directly to Churchill. This branch distilled thousands of sources of data into succinct charts and figures, so that the status of the nation's food supplies (for example) could be instantly evaluated. Lindemann's statistical branch often caused tensions between government departments, but because it allowed Churchill to make quick decisions based on accurate data which directly affected the war effort, its importance should not be underestimated.[2]

In 1940, Lindemann joined experimental department MD1 under Major-General Jefferis.[6] He worked on hollow charge weapons, the Sticky bomb and other innovative weapons. General Ismay, who supervised MD1, recalled:

"Churchill used to say that the Prof’s brain was a beautiful piece of mechanism, and the Prof did not dissent from that judgement. He seemed to have a poor opinion of the intellect of everyone with the exception of Lord Birkenhead, Mr Churchill and Professor Lindemann; and he had a special contempt for the bureaucrat and all his ways. The Ministry of Supply and the Ordnance Board were two of his pet aversions, and he derived a great deal of pleasure from forestalling them with new inventions. In his appointment as Personal Assistant to the Prime Minister no field of activity was closed to him. He was as obstinate as a mule, and unwilling to admit that there was any problem under the sun which he was not qualified to solve. He would write a memorandum on high strategy one day, and a thesis on egg production on the next. He seemed to try to give the impression of wanting to quarrel with everybody, and of preferring everyone’s room to their company; but once he had accepted a man as a friend, he never failed him, and there are many of his war-time colleagues who will ever remember him with deep personal affection. He hated Hitler and all his works, and his contribution to Hitler’s downfall in all sorts of odd ways was considerable."[7]

In 1942 he presented the War Cabinet with a paper advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. The paper became known as the 'dehousing paper' and was based on studies of German bombing on Birmingham, Kingston upon Hull and elsewhere. It estimated the expected damage the RAF could do if it concentrated all its efforts into area bombing. His estimates of its effectiveness were opposed by Sir Henry Tizard and Professor Blackett among others. In 1961, physicist and writer C.P. Snow presented Lindemann's ideas in a highly critical light.[8] However, his official biographer Furneaux-Smith advanced the opinion that there was less difference between Tizard and Lindemann than Snow suggested and wrote that "As Snow thought, quite wrongly, that Lindemann had a sadistic streak, it was perhaps natural that he should represent him as elated at the prospect of destroying working-class dwellings and killing thousands of women and children."[9]

This paper became the genesis of the assault on German civilian morale by area bombardment.[citation needed] The strategy, agreed to by the Cabinet and became Government policy, and was an important part of the total war waged against Germany. It was implemented with great vigour by Air Chief Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris as officer commanding RAF Bomber Command. Throughout the war Lindemann, along with his former student R. V. Jones, played a key part in the battle of the beams, providing insight on how the Germans were using radio navigation to increase the precision of their bombing campaigns.[2]

Lord Cherwell is well known as a doubter of the Nazi "V" program.[2] Duncan Sandys led the investigation into the feasibility of Long Range Rockets for the Chiefs of Staff.[citation needed] Most probably slighted that Sandys, a non-scientist, led the investigation rather that himself Lindemann continued to lead a campaign against the existence of the V2 program. Despite overwhelming evidence from agents reports and drawings, photographic reconnaissance and scientific opinion, he remarked "At the end of the war, when we know the full story, we shall find that the rocket was a mare's nest". It was a remark he would live to regret.[citation needed] However colleague, Stuart MacRae defended Cherwell's reputation:

"Prof certainly never suggested that nothing need be done about the V weapons; on the contrary he was always urging us to try to think up some brilliant counter measure against it which we were unable to do. What he did maintain, though, was that the weapon as described in the intelligence reports was a non-starter. They claimed that it would have a warhead carrying 10 tons of high explosive. The Prof., who was of course a brilliant mathematician, worked out that this was impossible, that the maximum size of warhead for a flying bomb of the sort described would enable no more than one ton of high explosive to be carried, and that therefore the weapon would not have such a devastating effect as had been suggested."[10]

He has been described as having "an almost pathological hatred for Nazi Germany, and an almost medieval desire for revenge was a part of his character".[11]

[edit] Back at Oxford

In 1945 he returned to his post at Oxford University and the Clarendon laboratory. He continued to advise the government on nuclear research and created the Atomic Energy Authority.[2]

[edit] Honours

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Crowther (1965), p.343
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Blake (2004)
  3. ^ Thomson, 1958, p54
  4. ^ Lindemann, 1919
  5. ^ Thomson, 1958, p56
  6. ^ Thomson, 1958, p63
  7. ^ Ismay, 1960, p173
  8. ^ Snow, 1961
  9. ^ Furneaux-Smith, F., 1961 pp259-260
  10. ^ MacRae, 1971, p170
  11. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, J.W. & Nicholls, A., 1972, p.179

[edit] General references

[edit] Further reading

  • Fort, A. (2004). Prof: The Life and Times of Frederick Lindemann. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-4007-X. 

[edit] Bibliography

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Political offices
Preceded by
Sir William Jowitt		 Paymaster-General
1942–1945		 Succeeded by
Vacant
Preceded by
The Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor		 Paymaster-General
1951–1953		 Succeeded by
The Earl of Selkirk
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
New Creation		 Viscount Cherwell Succeeded by
Extinct