Prof : the life of Frederick Lindemann

Guardian Review

I do not like thee Dr Fell . . . Seldom have the words fitted better than in the case of Frederick Lindemann, Winston Churchill's famous "on tap" expert. The reason was easy enough to tell, as this thoughtful, amused and well-researched biography brings out. The Prof was almost without saving graces. The mystery is not why people did not like him, but why his master did. Arrogant, boastful, childishly competitive, reactionary, racist - Lindemann raised the hackles of practically everybody. "He thinks he is a mixture of John the Baptist, Maynard Keynes and Lord Leverhulme," observed Jock Colville; "he is really an ingenious but slightly inflated frog with an unpleasant croak." Much of the prejudice against Lindemann was itself snobbish and xenophobic. However, his origins were neither humble nor (as many assumed) particularly foreign. His roots were in the German and Russian aristocracy - but his father lost his German nationality before Lindemann was born, and his mother grew up in New York. Though born in Baden-Baden, he spent his early years in Devon and attended a Scottish public school before completing his education at Darmstadt technical university. What singled him out was not birth or education, but his subject. After Darmstadt he studied physics in Berlin, where he met Marie Curie, befriended Albert Einstein and learnt about aeronautics, before returning to England in 1914. He was physically brave: during the first world war, he impressed fellow boffins by his way of proving a personal theory about how to check a fatal aerial spin. He learnt to fly and demonstrated the technique himself. In 1919, he was appointed to the chair in physics at Oxford. With only six students on the course it was scarcely a taxing job, and Lindemann - though apparently heterosexual - adopted the leisurely donnish life of what used to be called a confirmed bachelor, supported by a Jeeves-like (married) assistant who became his chauffeur, typist, researcher, nanny and factotum. Lindemann's disagreeable traits may partly have been the result of an Oxford- induced inferiority complex. The prevailing attitude towards his academic discipline was summed up by the wife of the warden of All Souls, who replied to Lindemann's lamentation about the lack of scientific knowledge among the English: "Don't worry professor, anyone who has a first in greats could get up science in a fortnight." Fort's account suggests that Lindemann was an able scientist, but a less than brilliant one. Although a founder of the celebrated Clarendon Laboratories, he was a poor lecturer. By modern academic standards, he was also an unproductive one. He once acknowledged: "I can understand and criticise anything, but I have not got the creative power to do it myself." Clever, critical and impatient, Lindemann took up political causes and indulged a taste for upper- class company. Some likened him to a channel steamer, "because he runs from peer to peer". Allegedly the Prof "dined at Blenheim once a week" - the Marlborough family had a penchant for spicing its parties with the occasional house-trained intellectual. It was partly through such hospitality that he was drawn into a circle that included the Winston Churchills. Invitations to Chartwell followed, and Lindemann was soon a regular guest. Yet the relationship was not primarily social. From the early 30s, Churchill shared with Lindemann an obsession with Britain's lack of air defences. The Prof provided the figures and scientific know-how with which the politician was able to pepper his speeches. In return, Churchill got him on committees. Whether the rearmament cause was helped or hindered by Lindemann's championship of it remains, however, a moot point - according to his biographer, he so alienated Sir Henry Tizard's Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence with his crackpot schemes that the committee was dissolved and reconstituted without him. Churchill, however, did not lose faith in his one-man think- tank, and when war came he made him a scientific adviser at the Admiralty, before bringing him into No 10 the following year. In 1941 he was given a peerage (with the title Lord Cherwell) and appointed paymaster-general. On the back benches, suspicion was rife - wags called him "Lord Berlin" - yet there was no doubting his influence. Partly as oracle and partly as bromide (he was good at "relaxing the Old Man", noted one observer), Lindemann was one of a tiny band allowed to see the PM daily. According to Fort, Churchill valued Lindemann's dogged independence, without always heeding it. However, the record is mixed. Although there were successes, the wisdom of hindsight reveals the Prof's judgment to have been shaky on many occasions: for example, over evidence of German "weapons of mass destruction" (V2 rockets) which threatened to flatten London, and the "area bombing" of civilian targets, which Lindemann notoriously supported. He was a little, though not much, quicker off the mark over the danger of a Nazi atom bomb, continuing to insist until almost too late that practical difficulties would delay the production of a weapon by either side for several years. In 1945, Lindemann returned to Oxford. Six years later, Churchill brought him in a second time, with a brief to look after atomic energy. "I must have Prof," declared the returning prime minister, "he is my adder" - and then obscurely qualified his own remark: "No, I can add: he is my taker-away." Lindemann died in 1957, with a voice like an "odd sort of squeaky giggle" to the end. What was his spell? Churchill demanded from his inner circle a mixture of outspokenness and hero worship, and Lindemann provided both. Would the war have ended any later, in his absence? Wisely, Lindemann's affectionate but measured biographer gives no verdict. Yet anybody who succeeded - through whatever alchemy - in encouraging and succouring the great war leader deserves at least a cupful of our thanks. Ben Pimlott is warden of Goldsmiths College, London. To order Prof for pounds 16.99 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. Caption: article-prof.1 Fort's account suggests that Lindemann was an able scientist, but a less than brilliant one. Although a founder of the celebrated Clarendon Laboratories, he was a poor lecturer. By modern academic standards, he was also an unproductive one. He once acknowledged: "I can understand and criticise anything, but I have not got the creative power to do it myself." Clever, critical and impatient, Lindemann took up political causes and indulged a taste for upper- class company. Some likened him to a channel steamer, "because he runs from peer to peer". Allegedly the Prof "dined at Blenheim once a week" - the Marlborough family had a penchant for spicing its parties with the occasional house-trained intellectual. It was partly through such hospitality that he was drawn into a circle that included the Winston Churchills. Invitations to Chartwell followed, and Lindemann was soon a regular guest. Yet the relationship was not primarily social. From the early 30s, Churchill shared with Lindemann an obsession with Britain's lack of air defences. The Prof provided the figures and scientific know-how with which the politician was able to pepper his speeches. In return, Churchill got him on committees. Whether the rearmament cause was helped or hindered by Lindemann's championship of it remains, however, a moot point - according to his biographer, he so alienated Sir Henry Tizard's Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence with his crackpot schemes that the committee was dissolved and reconstituted without him. In 1945, [Frederick Lindemann] returned to Oxford. Six years later, Churchill brought him in a second time, with a brief to look after atomic energy. "I must have Prof," declared the returning prime minister, "he is my adder" - and then obscurely qualified his own remark: "No, I can add: he is my taker-away." Lindemann died in 1957, with a voice like an "odd sort of squeaky giggle" to the end. - Ben Pimlott.