The Nobel laureate was born in London 110 years ago today. Nature Network London looks at his scientific achievements and political legacy.

Anna Winterbottom

Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett (1897–1974), winner of a 1948 Nobel Prize for his work on cosmic rays, straddled the worlds of science and politics as an often controversial advisor to the British and Indian governments. 110 years after his birth, Blackett’s legacy lives on in London and beyond.

London links

Blackett was born in Kensington, and spent his childhood in the commuter towns of Kenley, Woking and Guildford. He served in the navy during the battles of the Falkland Islands (1914) and Jutland (1916), experiences recorded vividly in his draft autobiography. Blackett matriculated at Cambridge in 1919, eventually joining the Cavendish Laboratory under Rutherford.

In 1933, Blackett returned to London to lead research on cosmic rays at Birkbeck; a project which captured the popular imagination. The Daily Express report on the mysterious rays from ‘interstellar space’ coming ‘to bombard the earth night and day’ includes an awestruck description of ‘magnet house’, built on Malet Street to house a huge electromagnet.

A lasting London monument to Blackett is the laboratory that bears his name at Imperial College. On his return from a post in Manchester in 1954, Blackett was charged with expanding the Physics Department. Professor Tom Kibble, who recalls Blackett as a ‘towering and imposing figure’, remembers the rapid growth of the physics department to a dozen professors, including future Nobel Prize winner Abdus Salam.

Blackett’s impact on London was honoured when he became President of the Royal Society in 1965 and Baron of Chelsea in 1969.

Explosive politics

Opening the Blackett Laboratory in 1975, Harold Wilson recalled that his appointment of Blackett to the National Research and Development Corporation in 1949 ‘produced one of the most violent reactions in Parliament I have known in 30 years’.

Blackett’s controversial status in government was due to his outspoken socialist views. Beginning in 1939, he advised on naval and radar defence systems on the Tizard and Maud committees. A letter from the National Maritime Museum comments: ‘more than any other man you were responsible for the defeat of the U-boats in mid 1943’. However, Blackett earned enemies by dubbing Churchill and Cherwell’s policy of bombing civilians ‘a disastrous flop’, arguing against nuclear weapons in ‘The Atom and The Charter’ (1946), and calling for cooperation with the USSR.

Blackett also exerted a strong influence over the post-war Labour government, which in 1964 followed his recommendation to set up a Ministry of Science and Technology. Its head, Tony Benn, who spoke at a memorial meeting at Imperial in 1998, recalled Blackett’s ‘steadfastness of purpose and uprightness of view and total intellectual honesty’. Professor Kibble recalls the post-war period as a time when radical intellectuals, including Blackett and friends CP Snow and CH Waddington, exerted unprecedented influence over government policy.

Closing the gap

Blackett first encountered Jawaharlal Nehru at a meeting of the Indian Association for the Advancement of Science in late 1947 and swiftly became his advisor on the ‘Indianisation’ of the military. The letters between the two men reveal a warm friendship and Blackett continued to advise the Indian Ministry of Defense for the next 20 years.

The influence of Nehru and Blackett’s work continues to be felt. This October, former Indian President Abdul Kalam visited the Royal Society to receive the Charles II medal.

The ’People’s President’ is known for his work in building up India’s missile defence system and for his vision of a wealthy, equal and technologically advanced India by 2020. Looking at Blackett’s report submitted at Nehru’s request, the former President remembered reading it ‘cover-to-cover’ on joining the Defence Ministry.

Inspired by Nehru’s faith in science deployed for development, Blackett presented a strong case for rich countries to increase aid and technical assistance to less wealthy nations in ‘The Gap Widens’ (1969). While Abdul Kalam believes India is approaching the solution Nehru envisaged, Blackett’s argument continues to resonate today in many countries around the world that still lack the basic infrastructure vital for the development of industry and science.