J. D. Bernal by Brown Andrew;

Author:Brown, Andrew;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, UK
Published: 2005-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

14

Rebuilding

Bernal’s wartime contact with Birkbeck College was slight and somewhat peevish. Breams Buildings had closed after being hit by incendiary bombs in September 1940, but reopened the following month, with lectures being given at weekends rather than in the evenings. Lewis Simons became acting head of the Physics Department, and in March 1941 word reached Sage that he had sacked Mr Reggie Dobb, the senior laboratory technician. Bernal immediately wrote a letter of protest, but the dismissal was upheld on the basis that staff numbers needed to be reduced. Sage then decided that since the College was in operation at weekends only, he should take up the reins again (this was at the time he was starting to work at Bomber Command). After several Faculty meetings, a compromise was reached whereby Mr Dobb would be re-employed, perhaps on a part time basis, when conditions improved. Eventually, he was rehired for four days per week, and Sage asked the College to pay him for a full week ‘to lay the last ghosts of a controversy’.1 H. Gordon Jackson, the Acting Master, complained to Sage, asking ‘Where is this to stop?’ Sage’s response was judged by the College administration to be ‘a complete travesty of the facts’.2

Gordon Jackson explained that he was much more concerned about welfare of the Physics Department as a whole and Bernal’s inability to spend more than a few hours per month at Birkbeck, although he understood that he was carrying out work of paramount importance. Gordon Jackson was therefore going to recommend to the Governors that Simons be reappointed as acting head. Sage was ‘extremely surprised’ by Gordon Jackson’s letter and in his own defence stated: ‘As far as I am aware there have been no difficulties in the running of the Department of Physics in the present year, in marked contrast to the previous year.’3 He could not countenance the appointment of any deputy in whom he did not have full confidence and wished to put his views to the Governors in person. At this point, the Acting Master relented and explained that he was not unsympathetic to Bernal’s difficulties and suggested that they should meet for lunch. At the lunch, he seems to have persuaded Bernal that he could not run the Physics Department himself and that Simons was not such a bad deputy. He also suggested that Bernal’s original five-year appointment should be suspended for the duration of the war, with four years left to run after hostilities ceased. At the end of the four years, Sage could decide whether he wanted to stay and would be offered a lifetime appointment. This was mutually agreed in October 1942.4

After that, Bernal’s thoughts did not return to Birkbeck until early in 1945. In February of that year, he drew up a ‘Draft Scheme for a Biomolecular Centre’.5 This would be a multi-disciplinary department that would seek to exploit all of the available physical techniques to investigate the structure and biological functions of proteins. His proposals echoed those of the fictional Constantine in The Search for a National Institute of Biophysical Research.

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