The Fly in the Cathedral

The splitting of the atom, performed in a shabby Cambridge lab in April 1932, was a triumph of ingenuity over adversity. John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, under the stern gaze of the brilliantly eccentric Lord Rutherford, cobbled together handmade or recycled components - while American rivals had state-of-the-art equipment - to make one of the great scientific breakthroughs of all time. In Brian Cathcart's hands, this remarkable tale of success on a shoe string - p... >Voir plus