Second Part

0:09:07 When I first found the shape of the Fermi surface in copper and David Shoenberg began finding similar things in other metals it became clear that one could begin to understand some of the peculiar details of electrical conduction, particularly the influence of magnetic fields; it is very complicated and the detailed shape of the surface is the thing that gives an explanation of why these curious things are happening; I moved onto that and spent quite a lot of time on magnetic resistance; other things cropped up such as magnetic breakdown which enables electrons in high magnetic fields to go where they ought not to go, a purely quantum mechanical effect; that leads to enormously complicated effects and that I found fascinating; this occupied me for fifteen to twenty years; it was not hugely important but it was fun; I came back from Malvern after the war carrying with me a number of bits and pieces; the establishments rather encouraged people who were leaving to take away things that they might find useful; I took away oscillator valves which I used and applied straight away to superconductors; all the things were self-designed and if too complicated were made in the local workshop in the Mond lab.; I wasn't at all bad with my hands; the lab. technicians were important; the head technician, Frank Saddler, was a martinet and the other assistants found him quite difficult to work under, as did research students, but he was very good; we did rely on them as a lot of apparatus had to be made on the spot; life was very different then from what it is now; you didn't buy boxes of things and apply them but started from scratch; I feel much happier working with things I designed and know how they work; I don't see students now tinkering at the lathe but they spend all their time in front of computers, which is much less fun; we were not pub crawlers despite the numbers of pubs near the old Cavendish, but the biologists used to spend all their time in pubs; if we wanted to relax we would chat with a colleague; it was a noticeable difference; we used to hear Crick in the tea room as he had a loud voice; Watson I knew slightly; I hardly ever talked to Kendrew although we were at the same school

8:59:20 I came back with a Stokes Studentship at Pembroke for research in physics; I had applied towards the end of the war on the suggestion of John Ashmead, my superior in Malvern; other applicants all seemed to have published papers whereas I had published nothing, so I was quite surprised to  be awarded one; a year later at a garden party, Monty Butler, the Master, told me that they were putting up the pay to the other recipients, partly because they were married, but also because I hadn't been on their short list but they needed someone to look after the Chapel music; I did so for the four terms that I was there, then I went back to Clare as a Fellow; I was given the option of becoming a tutor or looking after the College library and opted for the latter; I enjoyed College life; I did not marry until my mid-thirties and the College was very important to me until then; my experience was that it provided a domestic life, and friends; teaching in college was valuable; I think it matters a great deal and is why Oxford and Cambridge have kept such a high standard of performance; the fact that the Colleges exist is surely the thing that attracts good students; I think it is an ideal way of a University running itself; I spent a year in Chicago working on Fermi surfaces in copper but found the social life almost negligible; I had just married so had companionship at home but I got the impression that unmarried people could be very lonely there; if you went into lunch in the Faculty Club you sat on a table for physicists and didn't mix with other faculties; the great thing about the Colleges is that after dinner you chat with all sorts of people, and ideas cross-fertilize one another

15:15:20 Started as a demonstrator, then lecturer, reader and then professor; was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor for ten years or more; Nevill Mott was the Cavendish Professor and automatically Head of Department; towards the end of his tenure he became wholly immersed in his work and valued another professor who could take on administrative jobs, particularly when it came to rebuilding the Cavendish; Mott was a very good physicist; he was old fashioned, not an experimenter; his theoretical work was always based on the idea of experiment; he was a man with a very good physical intuition; he was an extremely nice man, shy, but once through the shyness, very amusing; when he died Ted Davis produced a book of reminiscences about him by some ninety physicists; perfectly clear that he had had an enormous influence on their lives, as he did on mine

18:06:20 When I was President of Clare Hall I was occasionally called to meetings of Heads of Houses; when Joseph Needham was Master of Caius he would be there, so we got to know each other very slightly; one day he phoned me to discuss the Institute they were building in West Cambridge and invited me to be on the management committee; a fortnight later he asked me to chair the committee; the first thing I did was to reorganize the committee so that only a small number of active members remained; later became a trustee; I don't know a thing about Chinese science or very much about what they do; my experience of running both the Cavendish and Clare Hall was that it was very easy; in those days, on the whole, we were left alone; as far as the Cavendish was concerned, I was the head of it, I had in Shirley Fieldhouse an exceptionally good secretary; there was also a departmental secretary, so my task was easy; we had a financial secretary who dealt with money matters; to be head of a large department is much easier than for a small department; the College was rather the same; I was the first President of Clare Hall; it was small and we only had a few Fellows; after two or three years we started taking research students; what was very noticeable was that, as a new College, everybody wanted it to work well; makes the task of the head much easier and there was very little friction in the seven years I was there; when I became Cavendish Professor I stopped taking research students, and I could write books; previously I would have had about six research students; it was easy because the students, on the whole, were top class; once they had settled down and knew what they were going to do they just got on with the job; only once or twice had to take positive action with regard to an inability to write; if necessary I would be in the lab. for a whole morning discussing their problems; I would have thought that every student would have had up to an hour a week; it was a major task and enjoyment looking after research students; Brian Josephson had been top in the maths tripos, had then done physics for one year and been top of the physics tripos; I saw him once or twice in the lab. and was actually quite horrified at his total incompetence with his hands; when he came as a research student he elected to do experimental physics because he could do the maths and theory but was so bad at experimental work that he would do a Ph.D. to learn how to do it; about his second year I came down to the lab. and he started talking about an idea he had had; I couldn't understand a word he was saying as he was always incoherent; sent him to talk to Phil Anderson, wrote a short letter on the strength of which got a Nobel Prize; it was published in an English journal as we did not have the dollars to be able to publish in America; Josephson is still in Cambridge, at Trinity College

31:29:04 Most of the early books I wrote were teaching books for students; 'Cavendish Problems' was a collection of 200 problems suitable for the first two years of physics; I wrote a little book on thermodynamics which sold extremely well; I have written on electrons in metals, an advanced student book, and on the physics of vibrations, a two volume work which I wrote when Head of Department with time to spare; they were mainly at an advanced student level or general professional interest; I enjoyed writing though I have never felt I had a gift in writing for a general audience; on belief, my strongest views are against those atheists who believe there is no such thing as God; absolute nonsense as they cannot possibly know; have known one or two people who were obviously saints, like Charlie Moule, Dean of Clare and later Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity; he was a man who made me certain that one could not be sure there was no God; I have no religious views and am not compelled to believe in any way, but can't believe that the creation of the  Universe just happened; to me it is very important to realize that science is extremely limited in the things it can cope with; it cannot cope with human feelings or belief at all; the very strength of science lies in the fact that it does not try to do things it cannot do; people like Dawkin's who think that science dispels God have not the slightest basis for their belief; when I was a bachelor at Clare I used to go to Chapel, partly as a duty, but also the sermons were good and the music; didn't feel in the least hypocritical; nowadays the only times I go are for someone's memorial service; I am not politically minded; apart from the U.S. I have been to Japan and India for conferences, I am not a traveller; my wife was taught at the Cambridge Art School and learnt calligraphy and bookbinding; my advice to a young person is that the future of science lies in biological sciences not in the physical sciences; I expect students to be honestly searching for truth; have only ever found one student faking his results and encouraged him to disappear; I used to work better in the evening than in the morning; in the morning I would be in the lab. so when thinking out results and working out problems that was usually an evening matter; the truth is that problems used to arise very rarely; usually there was a long series of experiments and the incidental problems one could usually solve fairly quickly; it is only when a major piece of interpretation is necessary; that only happened in my life perhaps half a dozen times; a journalist asked Einstein how he worked and he said he worked in the morning and walked in the afternoon; asked if he took a notebook to record important thoughts, answered that he never had any such thoughts and if he did he wouldn't forget them