NationMaster - Encyclopedia: J.D. Bernal

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was an Irish-born scientist (from Nenagh, County Tipperary), known for pioneering X-ray crystallography. He was also as a communist activist; this has been brought forward as a reason why he was never awarded the Nobel Prize. Jump to: navigation, search 1901 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... Flag of Nenagh Nenagh (An tAonach in Irish) is the largest town in North Tipperary, Ireland, with a population in 2002 of 6,454. ... County Tipperary (Tiobraid Ãrann in Irish) is a traditional county in the Republic of Ireland, in the province of Munster. ... X-ray crystallography is a technique in crystallography in which the pattern produced by the diffraction of X-rays through the closely spaced lattice of atoms in a crystal is recorded and then analyzed to reveal the nature of that lattice. ... Communism - Wikipedia /**/ @import /w/skins-1. ... Jump to: navigation, search Sir Edward Appletons medal Photographs of Nobel Prize Medals. ...

A fictional portrait of him appears in the novel The Search, an early work of C. P. Snow. C. P. Snow, born Charles Percy Snow, (1905-1980) was a scientist and novelist. ...

Academic career

He was educated at Bedford School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he studied both mathematics and sciences, for a B. A. degree in 1922; which he followed by another year of natural sciences. He taught himself the theory of space groups, including the quaternion method; this became the mathematical basis of later work on crystal structure. After graduating he started research under Sir William Bragg at the Davy-Faraday Laboratory in London. In 1924 he determined the structure of graphite. Bedford School is an independent, selective, fee-paying school (public school) for boys, situated in Bedford, 50 miles north of London, England. ... Full name Emmanuel College Motto - Named after Immanuel Previous names - Established 1584 Sister College Exeter College Master The Lord Wilson of Dinton Location Regent Street Undergraduates 494 Graduates 98 Homepage Boatclub Emmanuel front court and the Wren chapel Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded... A space group is a mathematical symmetry category of n-dimensional structures with translational symmetry in n independent directions, such as, for n=3, a crystal. ... In mathematics, the quaternions are a non-commutative extension of the complex numbers. ... Jump to: navigation, search Rose des Sables (Sand Rose), formed of gypsum crystals In mineralogy and crystallography, a crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms in a crystal. ... Sir William Henry Bragg (July 2, 1862 - March 10, 1942) was an English physicist, educated at King Williams College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge. ... Jump to: navigation, search Graphite (named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789, from the Greek Î³ÏÎ±Ï†ÎµÎ¹Î½: to draw/write, for its use in pencils) is one of the allotropes of carbon. ...

It was in his research group in Cambridge that Dorothy Hodgkin started her research. Together in 1934 they took the first X-ray photographs of hydrated protein crystals. Other prominent scientists who studied with him include Rosalind Franklin, Aaron Klug and Max Perutz. Jump to: navigation, search Map of the Cambridgeshire area (1904) The city of Cambridge is an old English university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. ... Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin OM (May 12, 1910–July 29, 1994) was a British scientist, born Dorothy Mary Crowfoot in Cairo. ... Jump to: navigation, search Rosalind Franklin by Elliott & Fry Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 - 16 April 1958) was a British physical chemist and crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine structures of coal and graphite, DNA and viruses. ... Jump to: navigation, search Sir Aaron Klug, OM, FRS (born 11 August 1926 in Zelvas, Lithuania ) is a Lithuanian-born British physicist and chemist, and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy. ... Max Ferdinand Perutz (May 19, 1914 - February 6, 2002) was an Austrian-British molecular biologist. ...

He was later Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Since antiquity, people have tried to understand the behavior of matter: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, and so forth. ... The faÃ§ade of the main building of Birkbeck, University of London (formerly Birkbeck College). ... The Royal Society of London is claimed to be the oldest learned society still in existence and was founded in 1660. ...

Political activism

He was also prominent in political life, particularly in the 1930s after having left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1933. According to biographer Maurice Goldsmith, he did not so much withdraw from the CPGB, but lost his card and didn't renew it. He had joined in 1923. Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the global depression. ... The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was a political party in the United Kingdom, which existed from 1920 to 1991. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In 1939, he published The Social Function of Science, probably the earliest text on the sociology of science. Jump to: navigation, search 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... In academics, science studies (sometimes seen as science and technology studies) is an umbrella term for a number of approaches devoted to studying science, and as a discipline its participants often come from a wide variety of disciplines, usually history of science, sociology of science, philosophy of science, sociology of...

He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953. The International Stalin Peace Prize (renamed Международная Ленинская премия «За укрепление мира между народами», the International Lenin Peace Prize as a result of destalinization) was the Soviet Unions answer to the Nobel Peace Prize. ...

War work

He is known also as joint inventor of the Mulberry Harbour. Remains of Mulberry B at Arromanches A Mulberry Harbour was a type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on a beach during the Allied invasion of Normandy. ...

After helping orchestrate D-Day, JD Bernal landed on Normandy on D-Day + 1. His extensive knowledge of the area stemmed from a combination of research in English libraries and personal experience having visited the area on previous holidays. The Navy had temporarily assigned him the rank of commander such that he wouldn't stand out as a civilian amongst the invasion forces. However, the members of his unit were less than convinced as he directed a vehicle using the terms "right" and "left" instead of "port" and "starboard." Land on Normandy In military parlance, D-Day is a term often used to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mont Saint Michel is a historic pilgrimage site and a symbol of Normandy Normandy is a geographical region in northern France. ...

He is also famous for having firstly proposed in 1929 the so-called Bernal sphere, a type of space habitat intended as a long-term home for permanent residents. Jump to: navigation, search 1929 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A Bernal sphere is a type of space habitat intended as a long-term home for permanent residents, first proposed in 1929 by Dr. John Desmond Bernal. ... Jump to: navigation, search Artists conception of a space habitat called the Stanford torus, by Don Davis Space colonization, also called space settlement and space humanization, is the hypothetical permanent autonomous (self-sufficient) human habitation of locations outside Earth. ...

Family

His family was Sephardic Jewish on his father's side, though his father Samuel was a Catholic; his mother, nee Elizabeth Miller, was an American Catholic convert, a graduate of Stanford University and a journalist. Jump to: navigation, search For other meanings of Stanford, see Stanford (disambiguation). ...

Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena, is his son with Margaret Gardiner. He had three other children, two with Agnes Eileen Sprague whom he married in 1921, and one with Margot Heinemann. Martin Bernal is a scholar who claims classical civilization in Ancient Greece actually stems from Afroasiatic and Semitic cultures, not just from Europe. ... Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (Rutgers University Press 1987, ISBN 0813512778) is a work by Martin Bernal, expounding a controversial hypothesis that ancient Greece derived much of its cultural roots from Afroasiatic (Egyptian and Phoenician in particular) influences. ... Margot Claire Heinemann (1913 â€“ 1992) was a British Marxist writer, drama scholar, and leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). ...

Works

Ralph H. Fox was an American mathematician. ... John Macmurray (1891 - 1976) was a Christian, communitarian moral philosopher. ... Jump to: navigation, search Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (August 24, 1902â€“November 27, 1985) was a French historian. ...

References

Categories: 1901 births | 1971 deaths | Fellows of the Royal Society | Irish physicists J.B.S. Haldane with his second wife Helen Spurway John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (November 5, 1892 â€“ December 1, 1964), who normally used J.B.S. as a first name, was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist. ... Jump to: navigation, search Lancelot Thomas Hogben (9 December 1895- 22 August 1975) was a versatile English zoologist and geneticist. ... Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (December 9, 1900 â€“ March 24, 1995) was a British biochemist and pre-eminent authority on the history of Chinese science. ...

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