‘SCIENCE’S GREATEST DISCOVERY.’ So ran the front-page headline of the Reynolds’ Illustrated News on 1 May, 1932, the article underneath reporting that: ‘A dream of scientists has been realised. The atom has been split, and the limitless energy thus released may transform civilisation.’ The Sunday Express struck a more sombre note: ‘The Atom Split. But World Still Safe.’
For a few days after this announcement, the two scientists responsible for the breakthrough, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, were besieged by journalists and photographers and became rather reluctant celebrities. They had another brief spell of fame nearly 20 years later when, somewhat belatedly, they were awarded the Nobel Prize for their achievement in splitting the atom. But, today, how many people could name them or say what their achievement was?
If Brian Cathcart’s wonderfully engaging account of their discovery achieves anything like the success it deserves, then perhaps the names of Cockcroft and Walton will become as well known as those of Crick and Watson. Indeed, as Cathcart tells it, the story of how the atom was split bears many similarities to the story made famous by Watson in The Double Helix of how DNA was discovered, involving as it does the same mixture of luck, determination, inspiration and the relentless drive to triumph over rivals working on the same project.
Cathcart brings to this story a deep fascination with, and sympathetic understanding of, the lives and personalities of the main players. Cockcroft and Walton are not easy people to bring alive on the page. They were not larger than life personalities, like their boss at the Cavendish Laboratory, Ernest Rutherford, nor were they charismatic geniuses, like Albert Einstein. They were ordinary, decent, hardworking people; modest, shy and uncomfortable in the spotlight.
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