Professor Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell CH (April 5, 1886–July 3, 1957) was an English physicist who became an influential scientific adviser to the British government and a close associate of Winston Churchill. He advocated the wartime carpet bombing of German cities.

Life

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Early life, family and personality

Frederick was the second of three sons of Adolphus Frederick Lindemann (1846–1927) a Frenchman from Alsace who had emigrated to Britain in his 20s and become naturalised. Frederick was born in Baden-Baden in Germany where his mother, Olga Noble the widow of a wealthy banker, was taking "the cure". Lindemann always regretted his German birth. After schooling in Scotland and Darmstadt, he attended the University of Berlin as a Ph.D. student of Walther Nernst. As a physicist at the Sorbonne he carried out research that confirmed theories first put forward by Albert Einstein, on specific heats at very low temperatures.

Lindemann was a precise, austere, teetotal, vegetarian, non-smoker, though Churchill would sometimes induce him to take a glass of brandy. An excellent pianist and keen tennis player, he was later to compete at Wimbledon.

World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, Lindemann was playing tennis in Germany and had to leave in haste to avoid internment. However, he had no success in securing a commission in the British armed forces and so, in 1915, he joined the staff of the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough. He learned to fly and developed the mathematical theory of aircraft spin, devising, and testing on himself, the spin-recovery method that is, as of 2006, still used. Prior to his development of this method spinning an aircraft was almost invariably fatal.

Oxford

In 1919 Lindermann was appointed professor of experimental philosophy at Oxford University and director of the Clarendon Laboratory, largely on the recommendataion of Henry Tizard who had been a colleague in Berlin. In 1919, Lindemann was one of the first people to suggest that in the Solar Wind particles of both polarities, protons as well as electrons, come from the SunLindemann (1919) "On the Solar Wind", Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, Vol. 38, No. 228, December, 674. He was probably not aware that Kristian Birkeland had made the same prediction three years earlier in 1916.

Lindemann's policital views were, in modern terms, conservative and he was active in the opposition to the UK General Strike of 1926 mobilising the reluctant staff of the Clarendon to produce copies of Churchill's anti-strike newspaper, the British Gazette. However, unlike many contemporary conservatives he was alarmed and fearful of political developments in Germany (see Events preceding World War II in Europe).

He began pressing for a more determined national action on air defence. He became one of a number of experts who gave advice to Winston Churchill in the 1930s when the latter was out of office and leading a campaign for rearmament.

World War II

When Churchill became Prime Minister, he appointed him the British government's leading scientific adviser, and later to the ministerial post Paymaster-General. He would hold this office again in Churchill's peacetime administration. At this point Lindemann was known to many simply as the Prof. Churchill described him as 'the scientific lobe of my brain', and trusted him absolutely.

Lindemann established a special statistical branch within the government, constituted from subject specialists, and reporting directly to Churchill. This branch distilled thousands of sources of data into succinct charts and figures, so that the status of the nation's food supplies (for example) could be instantly evaluated. Lindemann's statistical branch often caused tensions between government departments, but because it allowed Churchill to make quick decisions based on accurate data which directly affected the war effort, its importance should not be underestimated.

In 1942 he presented the War Cabinet with a paper advocating the area bombing of Geman cities in a strategic bombing campaign. The paper became known as the 'dehousing paper' and was based on studies of German bombing on Birmingham, Kingston upon Hull and elsewhere. It estimated the expected damage the RAF could do if it concentrated all its efforts into area bombing. His estimates of its effectiveness were opposed by Sir Henry Tizard and Professor Blackett among others. (An account of the disagreement - and some lessons to be drawn from it - can be found in C.P.Snow's book 'Science and Government'.)

This paper became the genesis of the assault on German civilian morale by area bombardment. The strategy, agreed to by the Cabinet and became Government policy, and was an important part of the total war waged against Germany. It was implemented with great vigour by Air Chief Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris as officer commanding RAF Bomber Command. Throughout the war Lindemann played a key part in the battle of the beams, providing insight on how the Germans were using radio navigation to increase the precision of their bombing campaigns.

He has been described as having "an almost pathological hatred for Nazi Germany, and an almost medieval desire for revenge was a part of his character"., p.179

Back at Oxford

In 1945 he returned to his post at Oxford University and the Clarendon laboratory. He continued to advise the government on nuclear research and created the Atomic Energy Authority.

On 4 June 1941 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cherwell. In 1943 he was appointed a Privy Counsellor and in 1953 he was appointed a Companion of Honour. In 1956 he was created Viscount Cherwell, which became extinct upon his death without a male heir.

See also

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• Dr. R. V. Jones

Further reading

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External links

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• Blitzed by guidebook
• Annotated bibliography for Lord Cherwell from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Notes

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1886 births | 1957 deaths | Viscounts in the Peerage of the United Kingdom | British physicists | Companions of Honour

Frederick Lindemann