Churchill's Boffin--Frederick Lindemann.

Prof: The Life of Frederick Lindemann. Adrian Fort. Jonathan Cape. [pounds sterling]18.99. viii + 374 pages. ISBN 0-224-06317.

Frederick Lindemann, Churchill's friend and adviser for over thirty years, was a truly remarkable man. He came from an old family in the Palatinate who had become wealthy in the nineteenth century by engineering, and which had roots in both France and Germany. His father, however, settled in England and Frederick was brought up in Devonshire. Speaking English, French and German with equal facility, he got most of his education in Darmstadt. His family connections got him an entree to the court of the extremely well-connected Grand Duke, where he was popular as a tennis-player; there can be few young men who played tennis with the Tsar, the Kaiser and the King of Sweden (not at the same time); he recalled the Kaiser barking to his partner who had double-faulted twice 'Remember with whom you are playing!'

In 1908, at twenty-one, Lindemann moved on to Berlin University, where he proved himself an extremely good physicist. In a period which contained Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg and Einstein himself, Lindemann could be counted in the second rank. He was secretary to the Solvay Conferences--no small distinction. He enjoyed life in Berlin, and was a normal, social, if wealthy, young man. He was at a tennis tournament at Zoppot on the Baltic, and winning, when the Kaiser's yacht returned hurriedly; it was 28 July 1914. A telephone call, and young Lindemann was on one of the last trains out. He was a British subject, having become one to escape German conscription, and on his return set about offering his services and his professional expertise to the British Army. He had come cordially to dislike the aggressive, arrogant militarism he had seen in Berlin, and with his cosmopolitanism he was also the staunchest of British patriots.

Lindemann found himself, and his first major opportunity, in aeronautical research at Upavon in Wiltshire. The slow biplanes of 1916 were terribly prone to spinning. With a following wind, a pilot could easily find his airspeed dropping below stalling speed. Down would go a wing, and the plane would enter a spiral spin. As the pilot tried desperately to correct it, the spin grew worse, and the result was a--usually fatal--crash. Lindemann, working from first principles, calculated that a pilot should do the opposite of what commonsense suggested, by diving hard in the direction of the spin; then the danger would be that the overstressed plane would break up when pulled out of the dive. With great courage, Lindemann learned to fly and demonstrated many times that his theory worked. It was a great service.

Between the wars, Lindemann was at Oxford, where he made the Clarendon Laboratory very nearly the equal of Cambridge's Cavendish, and in 1921 met Winston Churchill and began the thirty-five year association with him for which he will always be remembered. In Churchill's 'wilderness years', Lindemann's great services were to air defence. Sitting in the numberless committees of the time, he strove hard for better systems and better technology. In the mid-1930s, the Air Ministry was sluggish, to say the least and was staffed by distinctly second-rate people; the Air Force was weak, old-fashioned and its aircraft the finest products of the First War.

Throughout the Second World War, Lindemann shadowed Churchill as head of his 'S' (for statistics) staff, until Churchill asked for him to be made a peer and a member of the War Cabinet. Churchill knew there were many matters of great importance, which he must understand, and was big enough to know he would not grasp them unless someone broke them down for him. Lindemann did that. He ranged widely: shipping space (carry vehicles in kit form, to save space); weapons production (don't make all the important racer ammunition in one factory, which could be bombed); tea rationing (don't do it--it is too important to morale); the list is endless. The nearest comparison is with Speer reorganising German war production.

What of the man? Lindemann was liked by his intimates and heartily disliked by everyone else. A social climber, arrogant, contemptuous, with 'the sneer of cold command' always on call. One of his tricks, when invited to do something--tennis, ice-skating, golf or playing the piano--was to pretend to be an absolute duffer who had to be shown the preliminaries; and when his instructor had made a fool of himself, suddenly demonstrate that he could do it very well indeed. A useful man--but not an easy one. When he was promoted from Baron to Viscount (by Eden) his reaction was that he now out-ranked Rutherford.

Adrian Fort has written a first-class biography, in a most readable style. It is well-researched, but the learning is worn lightly. He makes the science clear even to a non-scientific layman. He is not well-served by the title or the dust-jacket, which is a pity, because the book really deserves a wide readership.