> “The country was still recovering from the war, so it was amazing that the government had prioritized building a particle accelerator in 1947 and 1948,” Houlden adds, pointing out an image of the Liverpool skyline at the time of the accelerator’s construction in 1951 that shows cranes in the city still repairing damage from German bombing.
IIR, close US/UK cooperation on nuclear research ended when WWII did, and the UK found itself recast as a junior bottle-washer. There likely was a whole lot of national pride behind that budgetary decision.
I know! It’s not like it’s an obscure location, either. I feel like my grandpa knew everything about Liverpool but “They proved why the universe is made of matter here.” never came up.
I can't say the history was well-known even generally in the Liverpool department when I was a student, knowing Mike Houlden, and Arthur James, and John Holt less well. I was at least somewhat aware of it, though. I gather the unit of data-taking was the suitcase full of paper tape, but I don't know how that was analyzed.
What a wonderfully composed article that balanced telling of the science involved within the social political and economic context (for this lay person at least). The transfer of technologies and academics further westward reminds me a bit of “How the Irish Saved Civilization’s” thesis regarding certain monasteries preservation of knowledge during the post-Roman period of Western Europe. A pity for Ireland that it wasn’t as able to capitalize on the role as the US after WWII.
No, the title and book focus on Ireland’s role but that does not in any way diminish the contributions of others. The relationship of Moors in Iberia and Seljuks in Anatolia was more adversarial however.
Wild. I grew up in Liverpool and studied Comp Sci there in the mid-1990s, and remember one of the buildings named after Chadwick. But I had lost interested in physics after my A-level, so I can't remember if this was mentioned or if I knew about it.
Chadwick Tower is where the Computer Science department was based at the time, so I was in there most days. It's pretty much opposite the Cathedral in question, with unobstructed line of sight. Building 207 on this map: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/files/docs/maps/liverpool-univer...
I still use physics as I'm a game developer, it's just that I stopped studying it actively, and instead focused on my computer science degree. Not to worry, I've done OK!
I don't remember a basement in the Oliver Lodge building, but I don't think there was much highly active after the tandem went, other than small short-lived sources made in the Universities research reactor.
There is a mistake in this article, which is honestly a bit shocking. CPT symmetry is still known to be conserved. The discovery at the time was the violation of CP symmetry.
Whilt you are correct that CPT violation is not supported by experiments (yet), the article was mentioning explicity that this was a competition to confirm C violation.
IIR, close US/UK cooperation on nuclear research ended when WWII did, and the UK found itself recast as a junior bottle-washer. There likely was a whole lot of national pride behind that budgetary decision.
Edit - here's the history:
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-early-years-of-britains-...