by E Walter Kellermann, Stamford House Publishing. Paperback ISBN 1904985092, £8.99.
The story of the flight of Jewish physicists from the Nazis and their allies in the 1930s is well known, told usually in the context of major players, such as Albert Einstein, or Enrico Fermi. So it is interesting to read of how the events of that time touched someone less well known, but who nevertheless went on to a full and rewarding career in physics. In 1937 Walter Kellermann fled to the UK, where he was to establish his career in physics, in particular in cosmic rays. This book is his story.
After completing his schooling in Berlin, Kellermann left his native Germany in 1933, as the Nazis were making it impossible for Jews to enter university there. To continue his studies, he went to Austria – not the best choice – where he had relatives in Vienna. University regulations there were flexible and after only four semesters he was accepted as a physics-research student with Karl Przibram. Then with German occupation imminent and a DPhil to his credit, he fled to Britain in October 1937, and with some ingenuity secured work at Edinburgh University under Max Born. It was there that he made an important contribution to solid-state physics, calculating for the first time the phonon spectrum.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, Kellermann found himself interned, like many others, despite his refugee status, and was even sent to Canada on a dangerous voyage, during which the internees were kept in a barbed-wire enclosure. Fortunately, he was soon released, and joined the teaching staff at Southampton University.
After the war, Kellermann moved to join Patrick Blackett’s group at Manchester, to work on cosmic rays. This was to become his field for the rest of his academic life, in particular from 1949 onwards at Leeds University. At Leeds, he was one of the main instigators of the extensive air-shower detector array at Haverah Park, the forerunner of major modern projects such as the Pierre Auger Observatory. In the early 1970s his “15 minutes of fame” came when Kellermann’s group observed a bump in the hadron energy spectrum in cosmic rays, detected in an innovative hadron calorimeter. This could have been due to a new particle, which the researchers dubbed the Mandela. Sadly, the bump was eventually found to be due to a burned-out connection in the detector’s custom-built computer. Soon afterwards, Kellermann reached retirement age, but went on to a second career in science policy in Britain, the subject of the final chapter.
Kellermann’s account makes fascinating reading, describing the aspirations and frustrations of a physicist who was not centre stage, but moved among a cast of famous names. These included not only Born and Blackett, but also Klaus Fuchs, best known as a spy. The book also presents a revealing view of the British university system, with some alarming examples of racism, in particular in the 1930s and 1940s when departments were keen to keep down the number of refugees.
