You can look back at relationships and see in hindsight the
first hairline cracks. You didn’t see
them at the time but passion has blinkers.
Veils are gradually lifted, you not only get to know a bit more about
yourself (there are veils between us and our own hearts after all) but also you
see the people you know with different eyes.
This applies to other aspects of your life as well, like careers. Looking back through the wreckage of my
physics career many things have become clearer.
I hated physics at school, loathed it, in fact. But I’d read enough about the subject to
know that the awful tedious physics one ploughs through in class, bears little
relation to the beauty of relativity, our galaxies, sub atomic particles etc
and the practical applications for all that knowledge. To me it all felt pure and noble – a search
for truth. Having good enough grades in
every other subject, bar physics, I managed to get into university to study
what I loved. My physics degree was fun
and I sailed through with a 1st class degree.
I started my PHD and was lucky enough to get a CAST award, which
involved working in the prestigious Royal Signal and Radar Establishment (RSRE)
in Malvern for a month every year.
During this month, I was put up in a lovely health farm and the healthy
food, regular walks in the Malvern hills and physics research was a heady
combination for me.
The first cracks appeared when the Duke of Edinburgh came to
the site, to give the RSRE an award for excellence in industry. His security people, refused me entrance to
the site that morning. Somewhat
bewildered, I was forced to spend the day outside in the hills and not cooped
up in a lab with experiments. No big
deal, but the next day everyone including my supervisor was enraged on my behalf. Apparently, being from Northern Ireland and
technically a visitor, my presence constituted a threat to the royal
party. So, despite having security
clearance and badges etc I was deemed too dangerous. It’s quite amusing really and I could see the funny side of
it. Which was more than my fellow
colleagues did.
Then, I did something which angered my supervisor. That year, I married, despite being half way
through my PHD. His annoyance was not
the distraction a marriage might bring but it was that my husband was from the
Middle East. At that time, relations
between that region and Britain were as challenging as that between Britain and
Ireland. So my working in a Ministry of
Defence centre like RSRE was causing him a major headache. My security rating plummeted and that month
I had to wear a red badge on site and was accompanied at all times by a
security guard! It all felt very
ridiculous, my work was not rocket science.
All I did was study the metal-semiconductor interfaces and try to
understand what was going on.
In order to get rid of possible contaminants (which would
complicate things) my experiments were done in an ultra high vacuum. To make sure that these surfaces were
totally clean, I cleaved them inside the vacuum. Then, in this totally clean environment with a freshly exposed
semiconductor surface I gradually evaporated down metals and studied them. As I say, not rocket science, but while I
was experimenting with antimony ( a metal), over in the USA, theorists were
modelling how this metal would behave on my particular semiconductor and blow
me down, my experimental results exactly matched their predictions. It was particularly heartening as this
happened independently; neither knew what the other was doing. Science is lovely when something like this
happens. You really get the sense of a
breakthrough of sorts. A jump in
understanding. It may have been one
particular interface but it felt like it was all exciting stuff with my papers
published and presented.
Given my security rating, however, my marriage was a real
headache for my supervisor and he complained bitterly. Exasperated by his nagging I told him my
husband’s family were in the oil industry and really rich. This he understood immediately and he
dropped his belligerent attitude. Mid
conversation his objections melted away and a tone of respect was suddenly
engendered towards me. Ah, the
respectability of wealth! We talked for
a half an hour in this vein and I accepted his warm congratulations on my
marriage. Then, I told him that
actually there were no oil mines in my husband’s family. No massive wealth that made my marriage
sensible and wise in his eyes. He was
floored and speechless. He could not
now backtrack and change his tune, after all that would make obvious his real
objections and how much money changed his attitude. He told me, I was too clever for my own good and we laughed
together.
He had the last laugh.
During my last visit to RSRE, while heavily pregnant, he pumped me for
ideas on how to make faster switches.
It was presented as a physics problem and I was encouraged to be as off
the wall as I liked in coming up with unique ideas. So I was creative and gave him a list of ideas of the top of my
head from radioactive decay, to diodes, to lasers etc. He took out a sheet and began scribbling
some of the ideas down. I laughed and
said most of them were just brainstorming stuff with probably no real chance of
practical implementation. He retorted
that only one had to work to make it all worthwhile – they could afford many to
fail. Perplexed, I asked what it was
all for. He told me that it was related
to my PHD research. Now, I was confused
and he was eager to explain. “We are
trying to make faster switches for bombs, that’s what we’re after, that’s
what’s funding the whole research you do here, each year.”
Indeed, that is a great pity, Colette. But it all shows the sterling qualities of your character.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely thing to say Jim!
ReplyDeleteVery good
ReplyDeletethanks, sweetie
ReplyDelete