Top Secret Exchange: the Tizard Mission and the Scientific War Good Reads

Primer: The Tizard Commission Nov 12, 2008

Posted by Will Thomas in British Science-Club Critiques.
Tags: A. P. Rowe, A. 5. Hill, C. P. Snow, David Edgerton, David Zimmerman, Frederick Lindemann, Harry Wimperis, Henry Tizard, Patrick Blackett, Ronald Clark, Winston Churchill
trackback

Henry Tizard every bit Rector of Majestic College (click for the Official Portraits of Imperial Higher Rectors)

The Commission for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence (CSSAD, a.k.a. the "Tizard Committee") was instituted by the British Air Ministry in late 1934 to consider new technologies that the Imperial Air Force might use to defend its territory against attack past bombers.  The committee was initially comprised of its chair, scientist and longstanding government enquiry ambassador and Royal College rector Sir Henry Tizard, the Air Ministry'due south Managing director of Scientific Research Harry Wimperis, academic experimental physicist Patrick Blackett, Nobel Prize-winning physiologist A. V. Hill (who had been the head of a World War I inquiry group responsible for improving anti-aircraft gunnery), and Wimperis' assistant A. P. Rowe, who served equally secretarial assistant.  Oxford physicist Frederick Lindemann was added soon thereafter on the insistence of his close friend Winston Churchill, who was at that time a backbench Conservative MP.

The germination of this committee was not unusual, as authorities R&D work was frequently informed past standing and ad hoc advisory bodies.  Henry Tizard was already chair of the high-level Aeronautical Research Commission, of which Blackett was also a member.  Lindemann's addition was engineered by Churchill equally a part of his song entrada to baby-sit against the recent rise of the Nazi Party in Frg.  He viewed it as his (and the committee'southward) responsibility to goad the Air Ministry into a newly aggressive enquiry endeavour, and was disappointed that the committee was an Air Ministry building torso, rather than one backed by higher government authority.

Before the CSSAD even held its first coming together, Wimperis consulted National Physical Laboratory radio engineer Robert Watson Watt about the oftentimes-rumored possibility that electromagnetic radiation could exist focused into a ray that could disable enemy aircraft or their pilots (a "death ray").  Later on consulting with his staff, Watson Watt denied the possibility, simply instead reported the possibility in apportionment that electromagnetic radiation could exist used to detect approaching aircraft far more efficiently than existing sound locating technologies.  This suggestion was rapidly accepted by the commission, the technology was code-named RDF (later on to be known as radar), and a new Air Ministry RDF technological research facility was established at Bawdsey (only subsequently moved repeatedly earlier settling at Malvern under the directorship of Rowe), and primitive RDF was integrated into Royal Air Force tactics at its facility at Biggin Hill south of London.

Meanwhile, Lindemann—who could be abrasive—pressed his own calendar on the committee, advocating that certain pet projects also receive research attending as a role of a more vigorous research endeavor, and sometimes going outside the Air Ministry to study on (and complain nigh) committee affairs to Churchill.  The other members of the committee resented his actions, objected to the projects he pushed against the recommendations of Air Ministry building researchers, and feared that his interference would set up dorsum the vital RDF research program.  Afterwards a turbulent year, Blackett and Hill resigned their posts on the committee in the summer of 1936, prompting its dissolution.  In short order, it was reconstituted with Blackett and Hill dorsum on, but replacing Lindemann with academic radio physicist E. Five. Appleton.

In 1937, the CSSAD was joined by a parallel commission (as well headed by Tizard) dedicated to "Air Offence", and the ii were then joined into an "Air Warfare" committee.  However, subsequently the showtime of hostilities in 1939 the survey part of the commission diminished in importance, and Tizard turned increasingly to the development of existing technologies.  RDF research was already well-established within the military'due south R&D establishments, making committee oversight less necessary.  In tardily 1939 Tizard attained a post as scientific adviser to the RAF's Chief of Air Staff, which he resigned post-obit the rise of Winston Churchill to the Prime Government minister'southward role and the rising of Lindemann'southward influence in Air Ministry affairs in the leap of 1940.  His committee was dissolved at roughly the same fourth dimension.  Tizard then left on a mission to North America to trade inquiry advances.  When he returned later on in 1940, he was named an adviser to the new Ministry building of Aircraft Product.

Tizard's CSSAD has obtained a degree of fame for its instigation of radar research as well as the opening of a series of bitter disputes betwixt Tizard and Lindemann, which were the subject of a lecture series and book, both called "Scientific discipline and Government" by the science-trained novelist C. P. Snow in 1960-61 (very presently afterward his famous "Ii Cultures" lecture and volume).  Tizard'southward inclusiveness—his insistence on marshaling the knowledge of a scientific community to inform decisions, and on bringing scientific and non-scientific experts together (as at Biggin Hill) to solve practical problems—was portrayed in contrast to Lindemann's aristocratic isolation and assumption of the validity of his own hunches.

Thus Tizard's victories over Lindemann came to exist seen symbolically as office of what the writer Ronald Clark called the "Rise of the Boffins" in his 1962 book by that name: that is, the assignment of a proper place for scientific expertise in government.  Lindemann's own major contributions to practiced policymaking, his creation and management of statistical and economic research groups in the Admiralty, for the Cabinet, and for Churchill himself, were downplayed in favor of maintaining Lindemann'southward usefulness as an icon of how not to integrate scientific expertise into government decision making.

In 1965 Clark as well penned a biography of Tizard, called Tizard.  The best account of the piece of work of the CSSAD to date is David Zimmerman'southward 2001 book Britain'south Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe.  Zimmerman also wrote the 1996 book Top Hole-and-corner Exchange: The Tizard Mission and the Scientific War, virtually Tizard'southward post-CSSAD visit to Due north America.  The whole idea that these encounters take much of use to say nigh the bodily history of the relationship betwixt "scientific discipline" and "government" has been taken apart in David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970.

millerfroment.blogspot.com

Source: https://etherwave.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/hump-day-history-the-tizard-committee/

Share this post