Cavendish Laboratory
Austin Wing
Early picture of the Austin
Wing
It was in April 1936 that Herbert Austin sent the following
letter to the
Chancellor, Stanley Baldwin.
Lickey Grange,
Nr. Bromsgrove
April 29th 1936
Dear Mr.
Baldwin,
I have for several years been watching the
very valuable work done by Lord Rutherford & his colleagues at
Cambridge in the realm of Scientific research & knowing that,
as Chancellor, you are keenly interested in obtaining
sufficient funds with which to build, equip & endow a very much
needed addition to the present resources, I shall be very pleased
indeed to present securities to the value of approximately £250,000
for this purpose.
May I request, if it is in order that my name will be
associated with the extension.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
H. Austin
The
Chancellor replied
10, Downing Street, SW1
April 30 1936
Dear Sir Herbert
As Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge, I gratefully accept on behalf of the University your
most generous offer of £250,000 towards the extension and further
endowment of the Cavendish Laboratory.
There can be no greater encouragement to the men who devote
themselves to scientific research than to feel that their work is
appreciated by those engaged in industry, the progress and
development of whose business depends so much on the laboratories
of our country. Your noble gift will be invaluable at this time to
Cambridge, and the benefits arising from its applications will be
available for the civilised world.
Yours very sincerely
Stanley Baldwin
Lord
Rutherford, Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, made the
following statement.
I am very much gratified at the very
generous gift of Sir Herbert Austin and his recognition of the
important work that has been done in the past by Sir J J Thomson
and his colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory. The donation will
give us an opportunity of building a modern research laboratory and
will also be of great value in helping to defray the large
expenditure required on modern research in physics, which often
involves the use of apparatus on a costly scale. The first use of
the money will be to build a laboratory for the utilisation of very
high voltages, in order to carry out experiments on the
transmutation of matter by high-speed particles and
radiation.
The Austin Wing
The Cavendish laboratory was severely
overcrowded but with the Austin donation it was now possible to use
some of the money to fund a high-tension laboratory and cyclotron,
along with improving the Cavendish block. In the end a total of
£91,500 was used for the construction and equipping the new
wing.
Early in 1938 Lord Rutherford died unexpectedly and so Lawrence
Bragg was appointed as Director.
Physics at Cambridge had enjoyed immense popularity under
Rutherford, but further progress in nuclear science required
resources that were no longer available at the University. 'Big
Science', nuclear and particle research requiring highly energetic
accelerators, could now only be supported at national levels of
expenditure. At the same time the other Cambridge sciences, such as
Chemistry and Engineering, were growing in popularity. It was clear
that the Cavendish needed a change of direction.
Architects Adams. Holden & Pearson & Harold Cherry were
given the contract to design the new Austin Wing. The main architect was
Charles Holden who designed the London Underground stations for the
London Passenger Board in the 1920s and 30s.
Work started in May 1938 using a local builder by the name of
Rattee & Kett, who are still in Cambridge today doing Building
Restoration & Stonemasonry, and in 2006 carried out stonework
cleaning, restoration and repair to the external fabric of
Baskerville House, Birmingham.
With war on the horizon, Bragg only got
permission to go ahead with the project by agreeing that the wing
would be used for military purposes during hostilities, and in
fact, it was used by an Army ballistics unit and Navy signals
unit.
The Austin Wing actually
cost £77,000 with apparatus and fittings a further £15,000.
Lawrence Bragg made the comment that they were lucky to build it so
cheaply, as after the war it would have been far more
expensive.
Location
2006.
It is believed that the stone is no longer there, because of
redevelopment.
When the building was well under way,
Bragg was very embarrassed to get a letter from Austin asking when
he could lay the “foundation” stone. The architect, Charles Holden
(1875-1960) suggested that as the “foundation” were actually in as
at this point, (in
fact it appears they were now up to the second
floor). That the
foundation stone could be built into a wall flanking the entrance
steps.
The laying of the foundation stone ceremony took place on the 6th
May 1939. It appears that Austin complimented him on this original
concept, but Holden let the cat out of the bag by saying “Oh, you
heard about that, did you, we forgot all about the bloody
thing”.
The Austin wing was completed in June 1940, it was 115 feet long
and 45 feet wide, with four floors and a basement giving a total
floor area of 34,000 square feet. It had a central corridor which
ran the full length of each floor, with research rooms typically
measuring 15 feet by 17 feet opening off the corridor. The external
and corridor wall supported the floors, so that internal walls
could be easily removed to give extra room if needed. To facilitate
this arrangement the services came up a shaft next to the elevators
and ran along the corridor above the doors.
The second floor contained offices, a museum bay, tea-room and
library. The colloquium room seated 70 and there were various
workshops and storerooms, but no teaching facilities. The building
cost £77.000 with equipment adding a further £10,000. Bragg was
allowed to spend a further £4,500 on “magnificent” furniture and
fittings, but these were stored in the library for the duration of
the war.
When the Second World War
began the British demand for physicists exceeded the supply. In
1939 the Cavendish was producing 160 physicists a year, with 40
researchers and 20 assistants. In the years following the war these
numbers increased tremendously, and by 1948 had reached a peak of
600 physicists a year, with 160 in research. The War also prompted
the introduction of telephones and secretarial staff to the
Cavendish.
___________________
This slate plaque in Free
School Lane commemorates the first hundred years of the Cavendish
Laboratory, from its foundation by the first Cavendish Professor of
Experimental Physics, James Clerk Maxwell, with the move of the
Physics department in 1974 to a green field site in West
Cambridge.