Reminiscences of my early years

Abstract

I wrote last February to ‘C.T.R.’ to congratulate him on his ninetieth birthday and saying that it would give his friends great pleasure if he would write his reminiscences of his early days in The Cavendish for Notes and Records. He replied saying he would try and see if he could write anything worth publishing. I reminded him of his promise in August and he replied: ‘When I received your letter last week I was just developing a rather sudden attack of pneumonia, which was a new and interesting experience. I have delayed answering your letter until the doctor was able to assure me that the pneumonia had responded to the penicillin treatment. I am getting on with the reminiscences. It has given me a good deal of pleasure thinking of old days.’ In September his reminiscences arrived and I wrote thanking him and trying to persuade him to add a little more about the development of his cloud technique. His reply is reproduced on Plate 9. It was the last letter he wrote as in a few days he had followed his ‘much loved Highland pony’. As he had not written a description of the diagrams he had chosen, Professor Blackett has kindly done this for him. T AM writing from my home which is in the pastoral countryside where A my forebears lived for generations and is only a few miles from where I was born more than ninety years ago at Crosshouse, the farm at the foot of Castlelaw. I was the youngest son and my father hoped that I would be the farmer; but he died when I was four years old. As it happened I became a physicist and at a very interesting time in the history of physics. In the reminiscences which follow, and which I will not carry beyond the early years of this century, I hope to give some idea of what this exciting time was like.