Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell
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Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell CH PC FRS (born April 5, 1886 in Baden-Baden , † July 3, 1957 in London ) was a British physicist and civil servant. He was best known as the confidante and advisor to the British war premier Winston Churchill on science. In this capacity Lindemann was one of the most important proponents of the blanket bombing of Germany during the Second World War by Allied bomber fleets. He was widely known to the British public by his nicknames "the Professor" and "Baron Berlin".
life and work
Frederick Lindemann came from a wealthy family. He was one of six children of the Palatinate Catholic Adolf Friedrich Lindemann (1846–1931), who emigrated to Great Britain around 1871, and his Protestant wife Olga Noble. Adolf Friedrich Lindemann worked as an engineer and entrepreneur and also built his own observatory in Sidmouth , where the family lived , as a hobby astronomer . The fact that Frederick was born in Baden-Baden was due to the fact that his mother was there for cure and treatment.
Lindemann studied in Berlin and did his doctoral thesis in physical chemistry with Walther Nernst . He then went to Paris as a physicist at the Sorbonne , where he worked as a researcher on problems of atomic heat ( heat capacity ).
At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, he joined the Royal Flying Corps of the British Air Force. At this time he developed the mathematical theory of the spin motion of aircraft. As chairman of the Institute for Experimental Physics in Farnborough , he succeeded in developing a method for successfully eliminating the spin of an airplane and in proving its correctness through a successful self- experiment . Furthermore, he organized the defense of the air space over London against German zeppelins with the help of tethered balloons that formed blockades .
In 1919, Lindemann was one of the first scientists to recognize the origin of particles of both polarities - protons and electrons - of the phenomenon of the sun, later known as solar wind . Apparently he did not know that Kristian Birkeland had made the same prediction in 1916.
Lindemann was a man of a scientifically sober, factual and precise character and, moreover, a non-smoker and a vegetarian .
In the interwar period, Lindemann was a professor of experimental physics at Oxford and director of the Clarendon Laboratory . Since the 1920s he had a close friendship with Winston Churchill, whom he visited regularly at his Chartwell estate. Churchill particularly valued Lindemann's ability to explain complex scientific relationships in an understandable and comprehensive way without leaving out essential relationships. For example, during a dinner party in Chartwell, he succeeded in presenting Einstein's theory of relativity in just two minutes, including all its important aspects. Churchill referred to Lindemann as the "scientific lobe of his brain" because of this ability.
In the 1930s, Lindemann was one of Churchill's most important scientific advisers in his efforts to arm Britain. After Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister in May 1940, Lindemann was made the government's main scientific advisor and later became Paymaster General . He held the same post a second time during the Churchill administration in the early 1950s.
Lindemann established a statistical department within the government that consisted of a group of professionals who had direct access to Churchill. This department compressed thousands of statistical data into concise and meaningful graphical and tabular overviews, which allowed Churchill to quickly assess the factual relationships and the situation and thus to make an appropriate decision.
In May 1940, he developed a method to destroy the German grain harvest from the air by means of mass dropping of fire platelets, which was used in Operation Razzle .
In 1942, the passionate Nazi opponent Lindemann presented a paper (so-called " dehousing paper ") to the government, which advocated the bombing of German cities by the Royal Air Force as part of a strategic bombing campaign. The paper was based on in-depth studies of the effects of the German bombing of cities such as Birmingham and Kingston upon Hull . This paper was the origin of the decision to wear down the war morale of the German civilian population by bombarding major German cities across the board (e.g. Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg). The government finally agreed to Lindemann's plan and commissioned Marshall Arthur Harris as commander of the British bomber fleet with the implementation ( Area Bombing Directive ).
1945, after the war ended, he took up his position in Oxford again. Furthermore, he stood by the government as a consultant in matters of nuclear research and created a. a. the Atomic Energy Authority , the UK's nuclear energy agency.
On June 4, 1941, he was raised to hereditary nobility as Baron Cherwell , of Oxford in the County of Oxford . In 1943 he was appointed Privy Counselor and in 1956 a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor. In 1956 he was promoted to Viscount Cherwell , of Oxford in the County of Oxford. Since 1955 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .
The British writer Charles Percy Snow described Lindemann from his own perspective "as a devious, power-hungry, almost sadistic loner, whose unprecedented influence on Churchill still stains the nation as a flaw".
See also
literature
- The Oxford atomic lord . In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1957
- Strength through friends . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1962 ( online ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ List of members since 1666: Letter C. Académie des sciences, accessed on October 29, 2019 (French).
- ↑ Strength through friends . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1962 ( online ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lindemann, Frederick, 1st Viscount Cherwell |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lindemann, Frederick |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British physicist and civil servant of German origin |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Baden-Baden |
| DATE OF DEATH | 3rd July 1957 |
| Place of death | London |