Word: lindemann
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hidden Feud. With a novelist's relish, Insider Snow then described one of the unknown battles of wartime Britain: the feud between Sir Henry Tizard (rhymes with lizard), "the best scientific mind that in England has ever applied itself to war," and German-raised F. A. Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell), right-hand science adviser to Winston Churchill. As Snow tells it, the fate of England all but hung on the enmity between these two strong...
Once close friends (and now both dead), Tizard and Lindemann turned to public power after failing to reach the first rank in pure science. They had little else in common. Chemist Tizard, who at times "looked like a highly intelligent and sensitive frog," was the outgoing, very English son of a regular navy officer. The "very odd and very gifted" Physicist Lindemann was "repressed, suspicious, malevolent." A fanatic Englishman-by-adoption, he was a fierce ascetic who shunned sensual pleasures. Snow recalls him as "an extreme and cranky vegetarian who lived largely on the whites of eggs,† Port Salut...
...first two of the three lectures were a novelistic account of the "closed politics" in the historic feud between Sir Henry Tizard and F. A. Lindemann, Churchill's scientific adviser before and through the Second World War. The tale was told, as you might expect, superbly. Snow is a sensitive and gifted man, and a personal knowledge of the scientists involved (as well as how the British government works) made the narrative more alive than it could possibly have been in the hands of a historian. This historic parable was meant to illustrate that, in modern industrial societies, a handful...
...bizarre or peculiar to our own age. It seemed to me that what he was describing--committee maneuvers, the politics of hierarchy, and "court politics"--are traditional means by which men have always arrived at decisions. His use of the phrase "court politics" to describe Lindemann's alliance with his powerful patron, Churchill, indicates how timeless and universal such politicking is. And, after the war and a decade of precarious coexistence, I don't think that any of Snow's listeners were surprised to hear that there are important decisions made in our society that are not subject to popular...
...problem is to persuade ourselves that the sacrifice is worth it. That is a task for politicians. It was an ex-haberdasher from Missouri, and not a scientist, who was President when the Marshall Plan went into effect. And even the "closed politics" of scientists such as Tizard and Lindemann derived their real significance from their connections with Churchill's political authority...