John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)

John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)
John Desmond Bernal, British physicist. His pioneering work in the field of X-ray crystallography enabled the structure of many complex molecules to be elucidated.

Bernal came from an Irish farming family. Brought up as a Catholic, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Cambridge, where he abandoned Catholicism and became (1923) an active member of the Communist Party.

After Cambridge, Bernal spent four years at the Royal Institution in London learning the practical details of X-ray crystallography from Sir William Bragg. When he returned to Cambridge in 1927 he planned a research program to reveal the complete three-dimensional structure of complex molecules, including those found exclusively in living organisms, by the techniques of X-ray crystallography.

In 1933 Bernal succeeded in obtaining photographs of single crystal proteins and went on to study the tobacco mosaic virus. It was not, however, Bernal’s own achievements in crystallography, as much as those of his pupils and colleagues, such as Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz, that brought about the revolution in biochemistry and launched the subject of molecular biology.

In 1937 Bernal was appointed professor of physics at Birkbeck College, London. His attempts to develop the department were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Despite his known membership of the Communist party and against the advice of the security forces, Bernal spent much of the war as adviser to Earl Mountbatten.

In 1945 he returned to Birkbeck College and in 1963 was appointed to a chair of crystallography. In the same year he suffered a stroke and although he continued to work for some time, a second and more severe stroke in 1965 paralyzed him down one side and virtually ended Bernal’s scientific life. His books include The Social Function of Science (1939), Science In History (1958), and the Origin of Life (1967).
John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)

The Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope
Initial discussion of an orbiting telescope, led by Lyman Spitzer and Leo Goldberg in the late 1940s, generally met with little enthusiasms.

Ground based astronomy remained more attractive to most astronomers, as shown by the national observatory campaign of the next decade.

During the 1960s, however, NASA’s Orbiting Astronomical Observatories program rekindled interest in the concept and led to suggestions for a federally funded Large Space Telescope with a 3-meter mirror.

The telescope soon became linked with the proposed space shuttle as an important payload and as a target for later maintenance missions.

As part of a continuous concern with the costs, astronomers joined NASA officials to redraft plans for the instrument during the 1970s, ultimately decreasing the mirror size to 2.4 meters and minimizing scientific goals in favor a program design that congress would accept.

The instrument proved much more difficult to design than originally thought, leading to higher costs, further modifications and a complete management shake-up in 1983.

The successful launch of the telescope in April 1990 appeared to justify the $1.6 billion project costs (more than four times the original estimate), but the instrument soon proved seriously flawed. The main mirror had been ground to the wrong figure, making precise focusing impossible.

The NASA review panel report, issued in November, concluded that inadequate testing procedures had led to the misshapen mirror.

The scientific rewards that Hubble Space Telescope promised are at hand. In 1996, Hubble Space Telescope took its 100,000 exposure – a milestone that some thought would never come.

The newly improved telescope is often more productive than the most productive ground based telescope with which it works.

With proper care and maintenance, it could last well into the first decades of the 21st century.
The Hubble Space Telescope