The fly in the Cathedral by Brian Cathcart

30th August 2011

The Fly in the Cathedral

This book talks about the first artificial nuclear disintegration and the background when it happened. 

Although I was a science stream student back in my school days, I was never really interested with physics, especially those about nuclear science. I studied to pass the exam. However, after I finished this book, in my thought, if I have read this book earlier, I would be interested on the subject. Basically, this book didn't explain about all the formulation or theory, rather it talked about the story of 2 researchers (Douglas Cockcroft and  Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton) and how they achieved the feat competing with other foreign counterparts. And the contents include some small talks on the famous scientists, names that appeared on our textbooks.

Stories about affair of Marie Curie, Rutherford family, Walton letters to his wife (then girlfriend), Gamow stranded in the middle of nowhere, etc. The writer was able to make the reader smile. The most interesting was the Gamow mischief action, the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper, where he asked his friend Hans Bethe to co-sign the paper to make the title rhyme and become alpha-beta-gamma paper. After I read this, I actually went goggled about it. How interesting! Scientists can be funny too!

From the book, there was a extract of letter from Walton to his then girlfriend about his research and talking about disassembling and assembling back the machine parts again and again for his study, I can relate to the frustration because I face this kind of things in my working life too, sometimes I have to dissemble and repair a part, then assemble back, which is a tedious job, the worse thing is probably I look at the wrong angle and assume wrongly and wasted the whole day on something not fruitful. If the people who disintegrate the nucleus can do this over and over again, yeah, I can do it too! 頑張って! 

After I finished this book, I recommended it to my colleague, however, he rejected because he would only read the financial or self-improvement books, what a waste! This book is very very very good!