Frederick Alexander Lindemann

Frederick Alexander Lindemann (Viscount Cherwell) , 1886-1957, British physicist and government official. He studied with W. H. Nernst and developed with him the Nernst-Lindemann theory of specific heat. His achievements also include the Lindemann melting-point formula and the Lindemann electrometer. During World War I he discovered how to recover an aircraft from an uncontrolled spin. Lindemann was scientific adviser to Winston Churchill during World War II, serving also as paymaster general from 1942 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1953. He developed Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, into a major research facility, and he was an important influence in the founding of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

Bibliography: See biographies by R. F. Harrod (1959) and F. Winston, 2d earl of Birkenhead (1961).

Lindemann, Frederick (Lord Cherwell) (1886–1957),physicist of French Alsatian origin who was Churchill's wartime scientific adviser. Born in Germany, a fact he always resented, Lindemann had been a friend of Churchill's since 1921. Known as ‘The Prof’, he was such a controversial member of the Tizard committee that in July 1936 it was dissolved and then reformed so that he could be excluded from it. In 1939 Churchill, then at the Admiralty, made him head of its statistical section and throughout the war his analyses of such subjects as the accuracy of British night bombing (see also Butt report) had a profound effect on policy-making. In 1941 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Cherwell and in 1942 was appointed paymaster-general. He was never in the war cabinet but his influence on Churchill was said to be greater than that of any of its members. He had his blind spots—notably, he doubted the existence of the German V-2 rocket (see V-weapons)—but he was a strong supporter of research into new weapons, the proximity fuze being one, the atomic bomb another; of developing new systems and counter-measures in electronic warfare; and of improving conventional explosives. See also H2S and scientists at war.

Bibliography

Birkenhead , Earl of, The Prof in Two Worlds (official life, London, 1961).
Harrod, R. , The Prof (memoir, London, 1959).