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William entered Trinity College in 1881, enrolled for the Mathematical Tripos, and was accepted by its principal private tutor, Edward Routh. He studied little else, won several college prizes, and played sport for relaxation. In the gruelling final examinations, William graduated Third Wrangler, a result he cherished. He decided to study physics, choosing ‘hydrodynamics and wave motion’ for Part III of the Tripos, gained a first class result, and spent nearly a year in the Cavendish Laboratory. He applied for the Professorship of Mathematics and Experimental Physics at the University of Adelaide and was appointed, despite his lack of teaching and research experience. As he sailed, his brother Jack died at Market Harborough; his father had died a few months before.

J.J. Thomson was elected Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge in 1884, and after new degree regulations were instituted in 1895, he led the Cavendish Laboratory to become the leading research school in experimental physics in the world. He relinquished the Cavendish Professorship in 1919 to become Master of Trinity College and was succeeded by his first research student, Ernest Rutherford, who led the Cavendish to become the leading research school in nuclear physics in the world. Rutherford attracted outstanding research students, among them Englishman John Cockcroft and Russian Peter Kapitza, both of whom were perceptive observers of Rutherford’s personality, style, and methods.

This chapter contains William Lawrence Bragg (WLB)’s recollection of his life, starting with a description of his early boyhood growing up in Adelaide, Australia, and his family’s move to England. It then describes WLB’s time at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, where he made his first major scientific discovery, which led to the development of the science of X-ray crystallography. It then tells of his experiences during the First World War, when he went to France to develop sound ranging and, with his father, was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1915. Next, the chapter describes the years after the war, when WLB took up a professorship at Manchester and met his future wife, Alice. It concludes with a description of WLB’s return to the Cavendish Laboratory, his work in sound ranging during the Second World War, and the years following the war.

This chapter examines the early and most extreme apotheosis of these connections between radium and life in claims emanating from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge to have produced life from radium. Among the first experimental work on the origins of life on the primordial earth, J. Butler Burke’s controversial work proved to be a key reworking of the history of spontaneous generation. In a series of sensational experiments, Burke produced cellular forms that were, if not quite living, at least life-like. Half-radium and half-microbe, these “radiobes” proved both immensely popular and immensely controversial, and served as a founding moment in the history of experimental research into the origin of life that has to date been routinely overlooked. Burke’s work explicitly linked for the first time the discourses of cosmic and organic evolution with concrete experiment, and with an element that appeared to bridge both realms. Revealed at the height of the radium craze, Burke’s findings also demonstrated the rapid sedimentation of the vitalistic metaphors surrounding radium. Not only reminiscent of life, radium itself, quite literally, vitalized matter.

The book contains three autobiographical chapters, one from each of the authors. In this one Andrew Briggs (A.B.) presents some of his experiences. Professor David Tabor was an important scientific and personal influence on A.B. in his doctoral work at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. A visit to Mount Tabor in Israel gave a memorable opportunity for reflection on the connection between spiritual matters and physical, geographical matters. Another important influence was the humble Christian and great nineteenth-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell had a verse from Psalm 111 inscribed over the doors of the Cavendish laboratory. When the laboratory was moved into new premises, A.B. asked whether the inscription could be included. This was agreed by the relevant committee. It reads: ‘The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein’: a lovely motto for scientists.

The vast expansion of scientific modes of thinking has introduced new material and interested motives into the practice of science. But has it brought about a deeper, more philosophical change? Has the long entanglement of religious and scientific thinking now at last come to an end? Is scientific thought finally fulfilling the ancient Epicurean hope of crowding religious ways of thinking off the stage? This chapter presents a theatrical metaphor to address this question, framing it as a drama in three acts. The first act begins in the Prologue, with the appearance of straightforward conflict. In the second act (Subversion), unexpected discoveries cast doubts on whether the pursuit of ultimate questions remains a feasible enterprise. In the final act (Resolution) the attempt of science to hog the stage is unmasked as a surprising continuation of the fundamental process that our metaphor of slipstreaming has been trying to describe.

Mercury is everywhere and we cannot avoid it. The average adult contains around 6 mg of mercury – assuming they have no mercury amalgam fillings in their teeth – and this is something we have to live with because we can do almost nothing to reduce it. Our average intake of mercury is about 3 mg/day for adults, and about 1 μg for babies and young children. At these levels the amount we consume in a lifetime is less than a tenth of a gram, although in previous centuries people would consume more than this in a day in the form of medication, generally for embarrassing diseases, such as the unspeakable syphilis or, even worse, the unmentionable constipation. We shed mercury from our body through our urine, faeces, and even our hair. We could excrete mercury via our saliva glands, which are greatly stimulated by mercury, but the mercury in saliva tends to return to the stomach. So where does it all come from? The answer is mainly from the food we eat, although a little comes from the air we breathe and the water we drink, and some may even come from our own body if we have mercury amalgam fillings in our teeth. Agricultural soils may hold as much as 0.2 ppm of mercury and this finds its way into plants and food crops. Grass contains relatively little mercury, around 0.004 ppm, which explains why grazing animals are not really contaminated, and meat and dairy products have low levels. Seawater contains even less mercury than the cleanest soil and has only 0.00004 ppm, yet some fish absorb mercury to the extent of concentrating it in excess of 1 ppm. Are we harmed by this amount of mercury? Probably not. In December 1997, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a seven-volume report on mercury and announced a safe daily dose of 0.1 μg/kg body weight, which for an ordinary adult would be 7 μg. Were this limit to be acted upon then it would outlaw the sale of all swordfish, shark, and most tuna, whereas the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which has a more pragmatic view of mercury, bans their sale only if their mercury content exceeds 1 ppm.

Having now examined attempts to explain the nature of the elements and the periodic system in a theoretical manner, it is necessary to backtrack a little in order to pick up a number of important issues not yet addressed. As in the preceding chapters, several contributions from fields outside of chemistry are encountered, and the treatment proceeds historically. So far in this book, the elements have been treated as if they have always existed, fully formed. Nothing has yet been said about how the elements have evolved or about the relative abundance of the isotopes of the elements. These questions form the contents of this chapter. It also emerges that different isotopes show different stabilities, a feature that can be explained to a considerable extent by appeal to theories from nuclear physics. The study of nucleosynthesis, and especially the development of this field, is intimately connected to the development of the field of cosmology as a branch of physical science. In a number of instances, different cosmological theories have been judged according to the degree to which they could explain the observed universal abundances of the various elements. Perhaps the most controversial cosmological debate has been over the rival theories of the big bang and the steady-state models of the universe. The proponents of these theories frequently appealed to relative abundance data, and indeed, the eventual capitulation of the steady-state theorists, or at least some of them, was crucially dependent upon the observed ratio of hydrogen to helium in the universe. Chapters 2, 3, and 6 discussed Prout’s hypothesis, according to which all the elements are essentially made out of hydrogen. Although the hypothesis was initially rejected on the basis of accurate atomic weight determinations, it underwent a revival in the twentieth century. As mentioned in chapter 6, the discoveries of Anton van den Broek, Henry Moseley, and others showed that there is a sense in which all elements are indeed composites of hydrogen.

The value of universities is not simply their contribution to human capital and economic growth, welcome though these are. Universities should enable a graduate to lead a flourishing, fulfilled life. That must mean the capacity to engage with the wide range of extraordinary intellectual and cultural achievements to which we are heirs and to which we should add for the next generation. It is the most important single responsibility of our universities and it is where the most significant reform is required. English education requires 16-year-olds to take life-changing decisions to specialize in just three subjects, and indeed allows students to drop a range of subjects at the age of 14. No other major Western country does this. It is the source of many of the other problems which we worry about. Fewer girls do STEM subjects after the age of 16 than in most other countries because in England they are presented with irreversible decisions to give them up when they are much too young. We suffer particularly acutely from C. P. Snow’s two cultures because our teenagers can join one of two apparently deeply hostile gangs—the humanities or the sciences, the Montagues and the Capulets of intellectual life—when most other countries avoid promoting such divisions. When employers complain about employability they often mean that young people have been force-fed for a narrow academic curriculum without a wider range of subjects and skills. Above all, as I look back on my education, my greatest regret—and that of many friends and contemporaries as we get older—is that we missed out on great scientific or cultural achievements of our age because of early decisions whose long-term significance we completely failed to recognize. I greatly enjoyed studying History, English, and German for my A levels but now I am shocked at the barbarism of a system which restricted my studies to those three subjects at the age of 16. This is the intellectual and cultural damage inflicted by our educational system when above all it should broaden our horizons and enlighten us. That this system is preserved on the claim it is necessary for high academic standards is even more scandalous.

Bundelkhand is a thirsty land. When I arrived there early in 2008, my skin—already parched from the dry winter air of Kathmandu and Delhi—immediately felt itchy. The cool air hit my sinuses with a prickly thud. They ached, and my eyes smarted as moisture left them. The land was an expanse of beige sand and rocks; beautiful, I thought, save for a dryness so intense it made me feel a little anxious. Most of the trees were not very tall, except for the water-thrifty “flame of the forest,” with its dark green dust-covered leaves, several inches wide. In the spring the leaves drop off and the tree’s bright orange blossoms, shaped rather like bird beaks, pop out to give the tree its other English name, “parrot tree.” Bundelkhand is sometimes called the heart of India. It sits in the center of the broad upper half of the subcontinent and its many ruins from the nation’s Mughal and Hindu past evoke the shifting suzerainty of pre-British India. Most of the ancient kingdom of Bundelkhand is now in Madhya Pradesh, also known as “MP,” or “middle province.” It’s a large landlocked state south of Delhi; Bhopal, the site of the devastating 1984 explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide plant, is its capital. The remainder of Bundelkhand is in Uttar Pradesh, “UP,” or “northern province.” Many would like to see Bundelkhand secede from both and become a separate state. With a population of fifteen million, it would be a sub-stantial state on its own. And some people believe this poor and undeveloped region will have a better chance of progress if it is independent of both MP and UP and their politics. I stayed in Jhansi, a large district in the UP portion of Bundelkhand, at the campus of a nonprofit endeavor called Development Alternatives. The group works to help people in Bundelkhand manage water and develop small industries as an alternative to agriculture. There was a simple guesthouse on the campus with hot showers, which revived me and rehydrated my dry eyes and nose in the evening.