John Desmond Bernal | |
|---|---|
 Bernal in 1949, photo byWolfgang Suschitzky[5] | |
| Born | (1901-05-10)10 May 1901 Nenagh,County Tipperary, Ireland |
| Died | 15 September 1971(1971-09-15) (aged 70) London, England |
| Resting place | Battersea Cemetery, Morden (unmarked)[6] |
| Education | Bedford School |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Known for | Bernal chart Bernal sphere Bernal stacking Bernal–Fowler rules Zone melting |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4, includingMartin |
| Awards | Royal Medal (1945) Guthrie lecture (1947) Stalin Peace Prize (1953) Grotius Gold Medal (1959) Bakerian Lecture (1962) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | X-ray crystallography |
| Institutions | Birkbeck College, University of London |
| Doctoral advisor | William Henry Bragg[1] |
| Doctoral students | |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  Royal Navy |
| Years of service | 1944–1945 |
| Rank | Lieutenant (RNVR) |
| Battles / wars | Second World War |
John Desmond BernalFRS[7] (/bərˈnɑːl/; 10 May 1901 – 15 September 1971) was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use ofX-ray crystallography inmolecular biology. He published extensively on thehistory of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular books on science and society. He was acommunist activist and a member of theCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
His family was Irish, with a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian andSephardic Jewish on his father's side[8] (his grandfather Jacob Genese, properly Ginesi, had adopted the family name Bernal of his paternal grandmother around 1837).[7] His father Samuel Bernal had been raised as aCatholic inLimerick and after graduating fromAlbert Agricultural College spent 14 years in Australia before returning toCounty Tipperary to buy a farm,Brookwatson, nearNenagh where Bernal was brought up. His American mother, née Elizabeth Miller, whose mother was fromAntrim, was a graduate ofStanford University and a journalist and had converted to Catholicism.[9][10] Elizabeth was raised Protestant and would send John to a Protestant school in his youth.[11]
Bernal was educated in England first for one term atStonyhurst College, which he hated and so was moved toBedford School at the age of 13. A pupil at the school from 1914 to 1919, according to Goldsmith he found it "extremely unpleasant" and most of his fellow students "bored him", but his younger brother Kevin, who was also there, was "some consolation",[12] while Brown claims that "he seemed to adjust easily to life" there.[13] In 1919, he went toEmmanuel College, Cambridge, with a scholarship.[14][15]
At Cambridge, Bernal read both mathematics and science for aBachelor of Arts degree in 1922, which he followed by another year ofnatural sciences. He taught himself the theory ofspace groups, including thequaternion method, which became the mathematical basis of a lengthy paper oncrystal structure for which he won a joint prize withRonald G.W. Norrish in his third year. At Cambridge, he also became known as "Sage", a nickname given to him about 1920 by a young woman working inCharles Kay Ogden's Bookshop at the corner ofBridge Street.[16]
After his graduation, Bernal began research underWilliam Henry Bragg at the Davy Faraday Laboratory at theRoyal Institution[17] in London. In 1924 he determined the structure ofgraphite (the Bernal stacking describes the registry of two graphite planes) and also did work on the crystal structure ofbronze.[17] His strength was in analysis as much as experimental method, and his mathematical and practical treatment of determining crystal structure was widely studied, but he also developed an X-ray spectro-goniometer.[18]
In 1927, he was appointed as the first lecturer in Structural Crystallography at Cambridge, becoming the assistant director of theCavendish Laboratory in 1934. There, he started applying his crystallographic techniques to organic molecules, starting withoestrin and sterol compounds includingcholesterol in 1929, forcing a radical change of thinking among sterol chemists.[19] While at Cambridge, he analysedvitamin B1 (1933),pepsin (1934),vitamin D2 (1935), thesterols (1936) and thetobacco mosaic virus (1937).[17]
He also worked on the structure of liquid water, showing the boomerang shape of its molecule (1933). It was in Bernal's research group that after a year working with Tiny Powell at Oxford,Dorothy Hodgkin continued her early research career.[2] Together, in 1934, they took the first X-ray photographs of hydratedprotein crystals using the trick of bathing the crystals in their mother liquor, giving one of the first glimpses of the world of molecular structure that underlies living things.[20]Max Perutz arrived as a student fromVienna in 1936 and started the work onhaemoglobin that would occupy him most of his career.
However, Bernal was refused fellowships at Emmanuel and Christ's and tenure byErnest Rutherford, who disliked him,[21] and in 1937, Bernal became Professor ofPhysics atBirkbeck College, University of London, a department that had been brought to the first rank byPatrick Blackett. The same year, he was elected as aFellow of the Royal Society.[7] After World War II, he established Birkbeck's Biomolecular Research Laboratory in two Georgian houses inTorrington Square with 15 researchers. It was there thatAaron Klug andRosalind Franklin worked ontobacco mosaic virus, andAndrew Donald Booth developed some of the earliest computers to help with the computation.
HisGuthrie lecture of 1947 concentrated on proteins as the basis of life, but it was Max Perutz, still at Cambridge, who developed the X-ray structural analysis of globular proteins in Britain. In the early 1960s, Bernal returned to the subject of the origin of life, analysing meteorites for evidence of complex molecules, and to the topic of the structure of liquids, which he talked about in hisBakerian lecture in 1962.[22]
In the early 1930s, Bernal had been arguing for peace, but that changed after theSpanish Civil War started. With the outbreak ofWorld War II in 1939, Bernal joined theMinistry of Home Security, where he brought inSolly Zuckerman to carry out the first proper analyses of the effects of enemy bombing and of explosions on animals and people. Their subsequent analysis of the effects of bombs onBirmingham andKingston upon Hull showed that city bombing produced little disruption and production was affected only by direct hits on factories. A supper for scientists organised by theTots and Quots inSoho generated a multi-author bookScience in War produced in a month byAllen Lane, one of the guests, arguing that science should be applied in every part of the war effort.[23]
From 1942, he and Zuckerman served as scientific advisers toLord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of Combined Operations.[17] Bernal was able to argue on both sides ofProject Habbakuk,Geoffrey Pyke's proposal to build huge aircraft landing platforms in the North Atlantic made of ice. He rescued Max Perutz from internment, getting him to perform experiments on ice related to Habbakuk in a meat store freezer belowSmithfield Meat Market.[24] This project indirectly marked his divergence from Zuckerman, when he was recalled from a joint tour of the Middle East investigating the co-operation of army and air force, but the tour established Zuckerman's reputation as a military scientist.[25]
After the disaster of theDieppe raid, Bernal was determined that its mistakes not be repeated inOperation Overlord. He demonstrated the advantages of an artificial harbour to the participants of theQuebec Conference in 1943, as the only British scientist present. On 3 June 1944, he was commissioned a temporary lieutenant (Special Branch) in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR).[26] His main contribution to theNormandy landings was the detailed mapping of the beaches, which had to be done without attracting any German attention.[27] His knowledge of the area stemmed from research in English libraries, personal experience (he had visitedArromanches on previous holidays) and aerial surveys.[28]
At Bernal's memorial service, Zuckerman downplayed Bernal's part in the Normandy landings and said that he was not cleared for the highest levels of security.[29] Given Bernal's Marxist and pro-Soviet sympathies, it is perhaps remarkable that there has never been any suggestion that he fed any information in that direction.[30] However, Brown provides evidence[31][32] of Bernal's contributions to the preparation and the success of the invasion.
After assisting in the preparations forD-Day with work on the structure of the proposed landing sites and thebocage countryside beyond, Bernal landed, according toC. P. Snow, atNormandy on the afternoon of D-Day+1 in the uniform of an Instructor-LieutenantRoyal Navy to record the effectiveness of the plans. He also assisted boats floundering on the rocks by using his knowledge of the area but said, "I committed the frightfulsolecism of not knowing which wasport and which side wasstarboard".[33]
Raised as a Catholic, Bernal became a socialist in Cambridge as a result of a long night arguing with a friend. He also became an atheist.[34] According to one reviewer, "This conversion, as complete as St. Paul's on theroad to Damascus, goes some way to account for, but not excuse, Bernal's blind allegiance for the rest of his life, to theSoviet Union".[35] He joined theCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1923.[36] His membership evidently lapsed when he returned to Cambridge in 1927 and was not renewed until 1933,[37] and he may have lost his card again shortly afterward.[36]
Bernal became a prominent intellectual in political life, particularly in the 1930s. He attended the famous 1931 meeting on thehistory of science, where he met the SovietsNikolai Bukharin, andBoris Hessen who gave an influentialMarxist account of the work ofIsaac Newton. That meeting fundamentally changed his world view and he maintained sympathy for the Soviet Union andJoseph Stalin. In 1939, Bernal publishedThe Social Function of Science, probably the earliest text on thesociology of science.
After World War II, although Bernal had been involved in evaluating the effects of atomic attacks against the Soviet Union,[37] he supported theWorld Congress of Intellectuals for Peace organised inCommunist Poland in 1948. Afterwards, he wrote a letter to theNew Statesman warning that the US was preparing "a war for complete world domination".[38] Consequently, when Bernal was invited to a world peace conference in New York in February 1949, his visa was refused. However, he was allowed into France in April for the World Congress of the Partisans of Peace, withFrédéric Joliot-Curie as president and Bernal as vice-president. The following year the organisation changed its name to theWorld Peace Council.
On 20 September 1949, after his return from giving a speech strongly critical of Western countries at a peace conference in Moscow, theEvening Star newspaper ofIpswich published an interview with Bernal in which he endorsed Soviet agriculture and the "proletarian science" ofTrofim Lysenko.[28] TheLysenko affair had erupted in August 1948, when Stalin authorised Lysenko's theory of plant genetics as official Soviet orthodoxy, and he refused any deviation. Bernal and the whole British scientific left were damaged by his support for Lysenko's theory, even after many scientists had abandoned their sympathy for the Soviet Union.
Under pressure from the burgeoningCold War, the president of BritishRoyal Society had resigned from theSoviet Academy of Sciences in November 1948.[39] In November 1949, the British Association for the Advancement of Science removed Bernal from membership of its council.[40] Membership in British radical science groups quickly declined. Unlike some of his socialist colleagues, Bernal persisted in defending the Soviet position on Lysenko. He publicly refused to accept the gaping fissures that the dispute revealed between the study of natural science and dialectical materialism.[41]
In November 1950,Pablo Picasso, a fellow communist, en route to a Soviet-sponsored[42] World Peace Congress inSheffield, created a mural in Bernal's flat at the top of No. 22 Torrington Square.[43] In 2007, it became part of theWellcome Trust's collection[44][45] for £250,000.
Throughout the 1950s, Bernal maintained a faith in the Soviet Union as a vehicle for the creation of a socialist scientific utopia. In 1953, he was awarded theStalin Peace Prize.[46] From 1959 to 1965, he was president of theWorld Peace Council.
Bernal was awarded theRoyal Medal in 1945,[47] theGuthrie lecture in 1947,[48][49] theStalin Peace Prize in 1953,[46] the Grotius Gold Medal in 1959[35] and theBakerian Lecture in 1962.[22][50]
Bernal was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1937.[7] A fictional portrait of Bernal appears in the novelThe Search, an early work of his friendC. P. Snow. He was also said[by whom?] to be the inspiration for the character Tengal inThe Holiday byStevie Smith. TheBernal Lecture and its successor theWilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture Medal and Lecture were named in his honour.[49]
The Bernal Building at theUniversity of Limerick was named in his honour. He is the eponym of theJohn Desmond Bernal Prize.
Bernal's brass microscope, in the possession of his great-grandson, was restored in an episode of theBBC Television seriesThe Repair Shop shown in April 2023.[51]
Bernal had two children – Mike (1926–2016) and Egan (b. 1930)[6] – with his wife Agnes Eileen Sprague (1898–1990), a secretary, who was usually referred to as Eileen.[52] He married Sprague on 21 June 1922, the day after having been awarded his BA degree. Bernal was 21, Sprague 23. Sprague was described as an active socialist and their marriage as 'open' which they both lived up to 'with great gusto'.[53]
In the early 1930s he had a brief intimate relationship with chemistDorothy Hodgkin, whose scientific research work he mentored.[2][54] He had a long-term relationship with the artists' patronMargaret Gardiner. Their sonMartin Bernal (1937–2013)[55] was a professor in the Department of Government atCornell University and author of the controversialBlack Athena.[56][57] Margaret referred to herself as "Mrs. Bernal", though the two never married. Eileen is mentioned as his widow in 1990.[52]
He also had a child (Jane, born 1953) withMargot Heinemann.[6]
Bernal's 1929 workThe World, the Flesh and the Devil has been called "the most brilliant attempt at scientific prediction ever made" byArthur C. Clarke.[58] It is famous for having been the first to propose the so-calledBernal sphere, a type ofspace habitat intended for permanent residence. The second chapter explores radical changes to human bodies and intelligence and the third discusses the impact of these on society.
InThe Social Function of Science (1939) he argued that science was not an individual pursuit of abstract knowledge and that the support of research and development should be dramatically increased.Eugene Garfield, originator of theScience Citation Index, said "his idea of a centralized reprint center was in my thoughts when I first proposed the as yet nonexistent SCI in Science in 1955."[59]
Science in History (1954) is a monumental four-volume attempt to analyse the interaction between science and society.The Origin of Life (1967) gives the current ideas fromOparin andHaldane onwards.
Other publications include
Although a devout Catholic in his boyhood, he became an outspoken atheist, socialist, and sometime Communist Party member...
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