Physics is Fun Memoires of Richard Wilson Version of September 25th 2009

Oxford University
Then in December 1942, at age 16, I traveled by train to Oxford to sit for a scholarship examination. The Oxford colleges had two scholarship examinations; one group (including Christ Church) in December and one group in March. Although my father and my brother Laurie had been at Queen’s College with scholarships, and Geoffrey had just taken up his scholarship there, the scholarship examinations to Queens were in March 1943 and I planned to try then if I failed in December. So on Chris Heath’s recommendation, I put Christ Church first on the list. After 2 days rest at home in London I returned to school to be told that the Mathematics tutor at Christchurch, Theodore Chaundy, had telephoned Chris to say that I was awarded the mathematics scholarship.
Christ Church, an English translation of the Latin, Ædes Christi, the temple or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House, is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Christ Church is one of the many colleges in Oxford that make up the university, and one of the wealthiest. But it has a complex foundation. In 1525, at the height of his power, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York, suppressed the Abbey of St Frideswide in Oxford and founded Cardinal College on its lands, using funds from the dissolution of Wallingford Priory. He planned the establishment on a magnificent scale, but fell from grace in 1529, before the college was completed.. In 1532 it was refounded by Henry VIII, using Wolsey’s property. He wanted to save money and at the same time break up the diocese of Winchester so he called it Christ Church and made the college chapel the cathedral of the recently created diocese of Oxford. The Dean of the diocese is also head of the college. The main quadrangle has a magnificent dining hall at one corner, the deanery and the cathedral on one side, two canon’s lodgings on another. One enters under Tom Tower, where the great bell strikes the hours. Amusingly the cathedral clock strikes on mean sun time which is 5 minutes later than Greenwich mean time. It is muffled to avoid too much confusion. Opening out of Tom Quad is a residential quadrangle, Peckwater quad. In which I resided from 1943 to 1946 in staircase 1 room 1.
Oxford in wartime was different from Oxford in peacetime. Intercollegiate sports were curtailed and in my case were replaced by fire practice. There were about 8 of us on shift when the red warning came. We sat to await developments in the Chapter House which, being partly underground, was protected from immediate damage. The eldest member of my shift was Canon Hodgson, the Regius Professor of Divinity but it was 4 younger guys who would operate the fire pump, which was a Morris 7 engine mounted on a trailer and started by a crank handle. We had to learn to run 30 feet with the trailer, stop near a static water tank (putting down the stands without churning up the grass which was a grievous sin even in wartime) and proceed to start the engine, connect the suction and hose, and bring water onto the fire. As always in a University there was intercollegiate rivalry and since there were no other sports the challenge was who could operate the pumps better. We (Christ Church) won that year, in summer 1944 at 33 seconds. But an untoward incident occurred. Everyone in the quad had been told, of course, to close their windows, and we were told not to let the water pressure go above 30 pounds per square inch. But try as hard as we could, each team found that the water pressure kept on rising. One team then found that at 40 pounds per square inch the water went over the buildings onto St Aldate’s street the other side. A minute later an irate, soaking wet, US military policeman appeared at Tom Gate accompanied by the college porter. Slowly but surely each of the 20+ water jets were lowered till they threatened Tom gate. The MP fled! I was blamed for this escapade. I would gladly have accepted the blame and the peer approval that went with it, but I was not guilty. Indeed our pump was too far from the St. Aldate’s side as a photograph easily showed.
In May 1944, just as I reached age 18, I went before the Joint Recruiting Board. In the first world war England did not treasure its scientists and one of the brightest, Mosely, the discoverer as an undergraduate of the Z⁴ law of X ray spectra, joined the infantry and was killed at Gallipoli. In the second world war anyone with any scientific training at all was the property of the Central Scientific Register of the Ministry of Labor. On their behalf, CP Snow was the Chairman of my board which also included (I believe) an Army Colonel and an Air Force Vice Marshal. CP Snow became well known later for his book about “the two cultures”. I was given a choice between two ways of serving the country. I could continue with mathematics for another year, learn Japanese on the side, (instead of fire practice) with the expectation of going to Bletchley as a civilian and decipher Japanese codes. Or, switch to Physics, learn about electronics, radio and radar on the side and then join the Air Force as a radar officer as my brother Laurie had before me. This was one of many pleasant decisions which I have made; because each of the choices seemed an excellent opportunity. I was also told that if I really wanted to do so I could join the infantry. But the choice determined the course of my life somewhat irrevocably. If I had come up to Oxford in peacetime, I would have continued in mathematics till the final year, then do a fourth year in physics. But it was wartime. We were all in a hurry. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had made the decision to learn Japanese and decipher codes. I would have been working with Alan Turing, the world famous code breaker.
My friend Konrad Freund was at an army base near Oxford and he came over to Oxford a few times when in that year (1943-1944). Konrad was about 6 years older than myself but born in Berlin. He told me that at age 12, in 1932, he went to Hitler youth rallies and was mesmerized by Hitler. But then he realized that he was Jewish. That made me wonder then, and wonder still, how well I would have behaved if I, a Gentile, had been born in Germany not in UK. Would I have behaved well? Would my ambition have got me to join the infamous SS? I like to think that I would have behaved well. But I thank God, assuming there is one, that I was never so tested. Konrad came to England about 1935 and went to the Royal School of Mines in South Kensington. I met him on the District line train from Wimbledon to Earl’s court. Where our paths diverged. We both loved trains. That love overcomes all age differences. We became friends and by 1939 I knew the names of all the subway stations in Berlin! As I looked over my book of track diagrams recently with my daughter I find a track diagram of the Hamm marshaling (hump) yard in the Ruhr. This had come from Konrad in about 1938. In 1939 Konrad was taken to an internment camp on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien from which he was released in March 1940 to join the British army. But he had, as yet, no skills of interest to the British war machine, so was put in the “pioneer corps” digging latrines and so forth. In May 1940, when invasion was expected imminently, all German born British soldiers were told to take an English name within 24 hours so that if they were captured, they would not be treated as traitors. Konrad had no chance to talk to his brother, who became Bruce French, or his mother. Konrad became John Gordon Dennis. Konrad was camped near Oxford and I valued his visits when I got to Oxford in 1943. From Konrad and my other German friend Klaus I learned a lot about why we were in that war and I was determined to help make it a lasting peace. Later Konrad married a Scottish girl, Margaret, and to most people and to his family he was John Dennis. But for me and for Geoffrey he was always Konrad. I would call at Christmas to wish him greetings, and as soon as I asked for Konrad, Margaret Dennis knew that it was either me or Geoffrey calling. Konrad ended up as a Professor at the University of California at Long Beach, where I saw him a couple of times including a few weeks before his death of a brain tumor. Konrad had far worse luck throughout his life than I had. But he never complained and felt himself lucky to be in the UK, lucky in his marriage and subsequently lucky to be in the USA.

In June 1944 the V1s came over England. I was spending a weekend at home trying to get some rest before my “first public examination”. Honor Mathematical Moderations. Although I got a welcome change from studying, I got little rest. The V1 had a 1 ton or 2 ton warhead - I cannot remember which. It was a pilotless jet aircraft with a simple program. The fuel was to cut out when the plane was over London, the ailerons would tilt and it would crash. We all learned that we had 7 seconds from the time the engine went out and the 1 ton exploded. In that time we learned to get under the table, away from a window or so forth. In that week I got little rest. I am not sure whether it was then or a week or so later that I was in our outside workshop (with a glass roof) when I heard one close. I went outside and heard the engine go out. I looked up and saw a head on view of the V1 which was about 200 yards away. I had time to call out to Geoffrey who had been in the workshop with me: “This one’s for us” I called, and flattened myself on the ground next to the wall.. Of course the glass roof went. Geoffrey got out the other side. No one was hurt in our house but a childhood friend was killed as she and her mother were running to the air raid shelter. We lost half the windows in the house and part of the front window frame came through the hallway and out of the back window - over my head . I have often been asked: “were you scared?”. The answer was no. I had no time at all to be scared. I did what I had prepared for. That and other experiences before and since have led me to repeat again and again that preparation for a severe untoward event can mitigate its consequences and in some cases reduce the probability of occurrence. The scary thing is being unprepared.

The V1s that came to us were launched near Cherbourg, and 6 weeks later the launching pads were captured by the allied landing troops. The launching sites near Calais and Dunkerque were still used for another couple of months. But most importantly the Americas sent over the “proximity fuse” for the anti-aircraft artillery. The V1s were faster than any of our fighter planes at the time and were hard to shoot down. Anti-aircraft guns were not very effective because the shell had to actually hit the target before exploding. But the proximity fuse arrived in mid-July. The shell would be fired, and would explode when it got close to the target. I believe that, with the help of the proximity fuse, the artillery shot down 90% of the V1s.
Later that summer the first V2 came about 6.15 in the morning. I woke and heard it come. Being used to the 7 second period for precautionary action, I was under the bed at once expecting, perhaps, that the ceiling would come down - as it had on another occasion. But then I realized what I had heard. A bang, and then the inverse of the sound of a bomb falling. It had come in faster than the speed of sound. On the radio later that day we were told that a gas main had blown up in Keswick near Kew Gardens 8 miles or so away. V2s were dubbed flying gas mains from then on. This led to a remarkably effective misinformation campaign. The radio news would rarely announce the exact place that a V2 landed, but described instead a general area further away from the launch point. In response the V2 range was successively modified by the Germans till most fell short of London.
In May 1945 Germany was defeated. We celebrated all over the country with VE day, even though Japan still had to be defeated. Unfortunately Geoffrey was sick at the time and in bed in his lodgings. That was indeed a pity but we celebrated without him. In retrospect I regret not having specifically gone to his lodgings that night. I do not know why I did not, and perhaps it was because I did not know he was sick. After dinner in hall, with free wine of course, several of us organized a country dance party on the parking lot at Gloucester Green, with music coming from the amplifiers that Geoffrey and I had built and that we had in the organ builder’s loft (used as a scout club meeting room) overlooking the parking lot One amusing incident occurred. We had become friendly with a US Air Force officer, Captain Alan Buster from Texas, whose job in the air force was examining photographs of the various air raids over Germany.. His men were not allowed out of camp that day to avoid a possible “over celebration”. As they proceeded down a “longways set”, where all the men are in a line and the ladies in a line opposite them and during the dancer they proceed down the line dancing with various partners in turn. As they progressed, the officer and an airman met each other. Although they linked arms they, of course, did not, officially, recognize each other. Later that evening, about midnight, a huge bonfire was set in the middle of Carfax which is the origin of the rectangular coordinate system that describes Oxford. Among other things my gas mask went in there. A jeep came up St Aldate’s with US military police trying to get through. Five other young men and I picked it up with wheels spinning and turned it back! Later, after midnight, I decided it was time to expand my college experience and although Tom gate was open for this special occasion, I climbed in to college though the Meadows and over the wall to the Students’ Garden and then to the Cloisters. Another student - possibly David Ritson - went to various colleges and collected their flags and put them all up over the Deanery. The next day the Steward made a rare entry into the Junior Common Room Dons were not “allowed” there. But he needed help in identifying which flag belonged to which college. I was fortunately in a position to help.
A week or so later I went again before CP Snow and his recruiting board. The war with Germany was over. The Air Force Vice Marshal said that troops and support staff could not get to the Pacific fast enough. Some men were already being demobilized. It was suggested by the recruiting board that I continue my studies for the third year and get a full degree but be prepared to be called up in case the Pacific war lasted longer than expected at that time. I was thus in the unusual and fortunate position not of being deferred in the formal sense, but directed to continue my studies at Oxford.

In July 1945 Chris Heath asked me to help to run a school boy scout camp in Titchfield Hampshire as an Assistant Scoutmaster. I bicycled the 80 miles from London with a nasty head wind. The camp site was dull; a big meadow attached to a farm. We sent one boy to pick up fresh milk from the farm every day. On August 6th he came back with the news - “an atomic bomb has been dropped on Japan. What is an atomic bomb?”. The war was coming to an end. I was overjoyed. It was the end of 6 years of war. Some years later, and many times since, I apologized to my Japanese friends for this pleasure. Maybe the dropping of the bomb was justified. Maybe not. But it should not have given me pleasure. Or at least the pleasure should have been very restrained. But personal emotions take over intellectual matters. I was already 2 years into my undergraduate studies and understood a little nuclear physics so that I was able to explain a little to the scout troop. I still think now, of the order:

(a) A 50 lb bomb destroys a house (as I saw in 1940)

(b) A 1 ton bomb can destroy a city block

(c) An atomic bomb has 20,000 tons TNT equivalent.

(d) A large hydrogen bomb such as Andrei Sakharov’s last Nuova Zembla blast has 10 Megatons equivalent.

AND the USA in 2008 still has 10,000 bombs ready to go and perhaps over 1,000 on trigger alert!
I went straight from the camp to my second summer factory job as “research apprentice” in Metropolitan Vickers factory in Trafford Park just SW of Manchester. I was assigned to the research department and my task was to test the electronics for a mass spectrometer. The spectrometer was to be used to measure concentration ratios of two isotopes with masses less than 1% apart in a highly corrosive gas with molecular weight about 400. The material was highly secret - except the world had been told about uranium hexafluoride somewhat dramatically just a week before. I found flaws in the original design of the spectrometer electronics. The designer used a simple low voltage switch for adjusting a 3 kV high voltage and it arced over when it was switched. I fixed it by putting a capacitor across the switch contacts so that there was no sudden arc. After a few days VJ day came. I had gone to the factory as usual dressed in a boiler suit, to find a 2 day holiday had been declared! So I and another young man, living in the same lodging, took the train to Knutsford on the main road north and hitch hiked up to the lake district. After buying fish and chips in Grasmere we ate them by the lake on a beautiful moonlit night. We were hungry so we ordered two threes and a twelve - two threepenny pieces of fish and twelve penny worth of chips. As I write this I am reminded of the song:

“Oh me ‘tatas and me ‘ot fried fish.

You can ‘ave a little if you wish

You can ‘ave ‘em on a plate or dish

Or in a little piece of paper”.
The manager of the youth hostel was very suspicious of our dress (boiler suits or dungarees as described in the US), and he was over booked. But many people failed to turn up so we got in. Next day we took a bus northwards toward Keswick and climbed Helvellyn, which I had climbed from the other side a month or so before. We then and set off back to Manchester and work the next day. We had a long wait at Preston although there were many cars passing, but we were eventually taken to Burnley from where we got the electric train to Manchester and then to Sale where we had our lodging. I also took this other young man to see Laurence Olivier’s Henry V. He was reluctant at first because he thought it would be too highbrow for him. But he was agreeably surprised at the exciting action scenes.
Another weekend I went climbing alone in the Peak district. I took a train to Chinley junction, walked up “The Peak”, down to Edale and a train back to Sale. I left at the end of August on the 5 pm train on the old Midland line through Darley Dale to St Pancras. The train took a lot more interesting route than the old LMS line to Euston. Alas, the Midland line is now gone. They were a great group of people in Metropolitan Vickers (MetroVicks) and I lost track of them. Fifty years later they had a reunion. I would have joined them but my step mother Winnie had just died and her funeral took precedence.
In fall 1945, the war was over. I was pursuing my studies with no need to do fire watching, act as an assistant firemen or other national duty. Sports were starting again so I went onto the river. In March 1946 I rowed as stroke in the Christ Church 2nd torpid. We did well. If I remember aright, one bump and one over bump. And then I rowed number 6 in the second eight in May. As happens when a boat is successful, we all gathered outside the staircase entry number 1 of Peckwater Quadrangle, just outside my room, with the success chalked on the stone behind, and our photograph was taken. A copy is in my photograph collection and hanging on my study wall. Men were back from the war. C.I.Mellor (CIM), who had been one of Chaundy’s students before the war came back and was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). He was captain of the boat club. Many years later in 1991 I met CIM again at the Christ Church Gaudy, just after I had got back from the Armenian-Azeri border as a member of a small party led by Caroline Cox, deputy speaker of the House of Lords. This is described in a special section of these memoires, expanded from short article presented to the first Sakharov Physics conference in Moscow, in 1990, and then a few days later, given by Elena Bonner to Secretary Gorbachev. I had also sent a copy to Alan Bromley, President Bush’s Science advisor and believe it was shown to President Bush within the week. CIM told me that his son Nicholas (also a House man) was working in the Caucasus and Central Asia so I introduced Nicholas, by e mail, to Caroline Cox. I have met Nicholas several times since in London and Andrée and I visited CIM and his wife Elizabeth at their house in Aldeburgh in East Anglia in 2007.
In June 1946 I took my final examinations at Oxford. There were 5 written papers of 3 hours each and 2 all day practical examinations. In the previous year I had gone through a different previous examination paper each week for my tutor. I made a list of items that appeared more than once on the examination papers, to work on the night before each paper. Then I took a weekend holiday. I hitchhiked to central Wales. I cannot remember where I spent the Friday night but it was probably at a youth hostel, marked on my map, just short of Builth Wells. Then at another youth hostel a few miles north of Llanidloes before coming back to Oxford.
I think that the written examinations were on Wednesday and Thursday with 2 papers each) and a fifth on Friday morning. I thought I had done alright on the written examinations but I was wrong. Apparently my Heat and Thermodynamics paper, the fifth, was bad. Interestingly, when I arrived at Harvard in 1956-1960 I was asked to teach the subject! It was an unpopular course with the undergraduates with only 15 or so students. In the following years I revamped the course and made it much more modern and popular. In 1956 we had 15 students from both physics and engineering. By 1961 we had 60 in physics and a parallel course with less emphasis on statistical mechanics was taught in the Division of Applied Sciences.
Returning to my 1946 final examination, I was much better at the practical examinations that were on Monday and Tuesday in the week after the written. The first day I had to measure the dielectric constant of water. We had one hour to describe the equipment I needed, and then we went upstairs to the laboratory to use the equipment that existed. At that time everyone in an examination had to wear “sub-fusc” under an academic gown. Sub-fusc was a dark suit, white shirt and white bow tie. We could take the gown off once one got into the lab. I was given a valve (vacuum tube) and equipment to make an oscillator and so on. But the valve was defective. As I explained to the supervisor it heated up but one could not see the glow of the filament. The vacuum was gone. Moreover one could see that the edges of the metal on the glass where the “getter” had flashed had got blurred. So with a new valve I finished in good time The second day I had to measure the separation between the yellow lines in a sodium gas discharge. I made a Fabry-Perot étalon, cleaning the glass with chromic acid (taking care not to spill any on my best and only suit) and we examined the lines with a simple slit system. Again I finished quickly. The yellow 2P -> 1 S transition was very clear. I found the higher transitions to the 2P state also. There were some spurious signals also and the supervisor (Dr Kuhn) asked whether I could explain them. I could not - but no one else in the examination even got as far as being asked!
By Wednesday evening the papers had been marked and the examination results were posted. My parents had driven up to Oxford to bring me and my stuff home. I had hoped for - and even expected - first class honors. But there was my name, top of the list of the seconds. All my hopes for the future went. With encouragement from the laboratory I had applied for a graduate fellowship from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Affairs (DSIR) for which a first class honors degree was needed. But my father at once said: “it will be difficult, but we can pay for your graduate studies.” Fortunately it was not necessary for him to pay. Since everyone in the laboratory had expected me to get first class honors, all arrangements had been made, and it was too late to change them! So after a 2 week rest at home I began graduate studies in nuclear physics with Carl Collie as my supervisor. Interestingly by the time I had arrived at Harvard University no one knew or cared about my examination grades. Even now several colleagues assume, incorrectly, that I got first class honors. As I look back on this, the fact that I was allowed to continue was a piece of luck which was more than I deserved.
The head of the laboratory was Dr Lee’s Professor of Experimental Philosophy Professor Lindemann - later Lord Cherwell. Although the professorship carried with it the membership of the Senior Common Room at Wadham College, Christ Church had offered him accommodation at the House and he had rooms in Meadow Buildings and was a member of the SCR.

As the rhyme stated:

Lord Cherwell, when the war began,

was plain Professor Lindemann.

But now midst Ministerial cheers

He takes his place among the Peers.

The House of Christ with one accord

now greets its newly risen Lord.

I am not sure when he was raised to the peerage. Just before the end of the war or just after. I suspect it was 1944.