Excavated from a little Darwin box of miscellaneous items is a well worn , nibbled novel sporting the above bookplate of Australian physicist , Marcus Oliphant , who played a part in the development of atomic bombs.
There is an inked inscription: M.L.E.Oliphant . Cambridge , October 8 ,l930.
While at Adelaide University , Oliphant (1901-2000) was Inspired by a talk by New Zealand - born physicist , Ernest Rutherford , head of the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge .
Oliphant obtained a scholarship, went to Cambridge , joined the Cavendish Laboratory. worked with Rutherford on construction of an accelerator and carried out research on nuclear transmutation.
In 1937, he accepted the Chair of Physics at Birmingham University, and began the construction of the largest cyclotron in Europe. As Britain prepared for war, Oliphant was one of a small number of mainly ex-Cavendish men who were informed of Britain's secret radar work.
A Sir Mark Oliphant obituary included the following :
Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls were physicists of German origin, working in Birmingham. Because of their status, Oliphant could not arrange for them to join in the secret radar program.
But they could work on nuclear fission and the practicality of constructing an atomic bomb. Frisch and Peierls wrote a famous letter, in which they calculated that the critical mass of a fission bomb could be as little as a few pounds of separated fissile material.
Oliphant recognised the importance of this conclusion and was able to introduce the Frisch-Peierls letter to senior defence science officials in Whitehall, and then in the United States. The British atomic energy group, including Oliphant's team, eventually transferred to the United States and Canada. Oliphant's skill and determination, and his friendship with the American cyclotron physicist Ernest Lawrence, were important factors in the establishment of the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb...
He was the first president of the Australian Academy of Science and became the Governor of South Australia in l971 , speaking out on environmental issues and the perils of nuclear armaments.
NOTE: The novel in which the bookplate appears ends with wild rejoicing over the end of WW 1 , bombs no longer dropping ... just the opposite to the present world on fire situation , the Israel - Gaza maelstrom especially, and Putin rattling nuclear weapons over the Ukraine..
