Why this book?
One afternoon in 2022 I was walking into town with my 10-year-old grandson, Jack, when he started asking - and remarkably telling me what he knew - about Tsar Bomba, the most powerful bomb ever detonated. I had been thinking about the history of nuclear physics for many years, but it was this conversation that was the final spark for this book. So came about my account of how the discovery of a smudge on a photographic plate in 1896 - the first hint of nuclear energy - in just 70 years gave humanity the ability to destroy itself in a blast more powerful than anything since that which killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Another fateful occurrence led me to start writing Destroyer of Worlds the following year while being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. From June 2023, during 21 weeks of chemotherapy and three of radiotherapy, I used the enforced withdrawal to complete a first draft. The irony then struck me. Several of the saga’s heroic pioneers, such as Marie and Pierre Curie, their daughter Irene, her husband Frederic Joliot, Enrico Fermi, and others, all suffered radiation damage and even fatal cancers because of their research. Today the biological hazards of untargeted radiation are understood.
Radiation’s potential for good is also recognised. Radiation therapy harnesses the destructiveness of radioactivity by directing high levels of radiation at cancerous tissues. Another way to use radioactivity in medicine, in much smaller doses, is to label substances by attaching radioactive tracers. The tracers are tiny amounts of radioactive elements, which are injected into the body. Atoms containing these radioactive nuclei take part in biochemical reactions in the same way that the normal atoms do, and by following their radioactive emissions a picture of what is happening inside the patient is built.
Properly directed these radiations succeed, whereas when used at random they can be destroyers. In 2023 I benefited from the positive uses of targeted atomic energy, such as X-rays, gamma rays, radioactive isotopes, and positron emission. So for me Destroyer of Worlds is synonymous with the teams of radiologists, oncologists, and haematologists at Oxford, who are collectively my Destroyers of Cancerous Microworlds.
Why the specific date range 1895-1965?
The discovery of X-rays in 1895 led to the discovery of radioactivity the following year and realisation that atoms are not the ultimate seeds of matter. This sparked an extraordinary chain of events that would unleash the atomic age. I was intrigued by how the discovery of a faint smudge on a photographic plate - like a clue at a crime scene - led scientific ‘detectives’ to unravel the mystery. How do you start? How did the understanding emerge and then, what did humanity do with the knowledge? Having been inspired to find out about Tsar Bomba, I made that my conclusion. These insights were mature by the 1960s, and I chose 1965 merely to illustrate a 70 years span.
You mention quite a few points in history where many accounts may have it wrong - which stands out most to you and why?
One which I regard as a ‘myth’ - Szilard’s epiphany about the chain reaction - and one more serious - the credit for discovery of nuclear fission. Szilard claimed to have had his idea while waiting for cross lights to change, in London, in 1933. Unless he was in a time machine, this is more likely to have been a false memory from decades later when he was living in the USA and using crosswalks regularly.
Nuclear fission, traditionally credited to Hahn and Strassmann in Berlin, was discovered - in the sense of being explained and understood - by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch on a tree stump in a Swedish forest. In 1937, Irene Curie had irradiated uranium with neutrons and found lanthanum (element 57 in the periodic table); she could make no sense of it and did no more. In 1938, Hahn and Strassmann did effectively the same, and found barium (element 56). They too did not understand it. The sole difference with Curie was that Hahn wrote to Meitner, his long-time collaborator (now fled from Nazi Germany), seeking explanation. Meitner and Frisch found the explanation. They 'discovered' nuclear fission; Hahn (who later got the Nobel Prize, alone) had done little more than Curie.
What’s next?
Preparing and giving lots of talks, podcasts and interviews, followed by a rest!
What’s exciting you at the moment?
I am interested in a forgotten genius, John Clive Ward. In 1950, he discovered the mathematical 'identities' that enabled a viable theory of electromagnetic forces - quantum electrodynamics - to emerge. In 1964 his work with Abdus Salam, uniting electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, led to a Nobel for Salam, from which Ward was controversially omitted. In the meantime, Ward had secretly been co-opted by the UK Government in 1955 to solve the mathematical problems underpinning design of a hydrogen bomb. After having his solution side-lined, Ward quit the project in a fit of pique, which created mayhem for the UK security services. In 1985, he wrote to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seeking recognition for this work. For the rest of his life, he became paranoid, convinced that the security services had murdered two of his colleagues and that his life was in danger. While this was not the case, his paranoia had a sound basis, as his approach to Thatcher placed him at the heart of an international intrigue that he himself was unaware of. To say more would give away the punchline!
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