12.
The Mond Laboratory
By
the 1930s conditions in the Lab had become too much
for many researchers, who were abandoning the Lab to
work in more comfortable conditions elsewhere. Kapitza
persuaded Rutherford to use £15,000 from the Royal
Society to build the Mond Laboratory. C.H. Huges designed
the building with large communal areas rather than long
corridors, a design which promoted chance meetings between
research students as they moved about the building.
The ideas that were exchanged during such chance meetings
were found highly beneficial to research, and the layout
of the Mond inspired the design of the new laboratory
in West Cambridge, 40 years later. In February 1933
the Mond was opened.
Kapitza
had asked the modern artist Eric Gill to decorate the
building with two carvings. The first was a crocodile
on the outside of the building. 'Crocodile' was Kapitza's
name for Rutherford, as it was a name given to great
men in Russian folklore. He also said that Rutherford
was like the crocodile in the children's story Peter
Pan, and that while the latter could be heard approaching
by the ticking of Captain Hook's watch, Rutherford's
booming voice would usually arrive before him!
The
second carving was a profile of Rutherford, in the entrance
hall of the Mond. This carving provoked years of controversy,
as Gill had produced the carving in an Assyrian style
which some claimed made Rutherford look Jewish! Rutherford
himself was not offended by the carving, but left it
up to his friend Niels Bohr to decide whether it should
be moved. Bohr was sent a photograph of the carving,
and found it to be 'most excellent, being at the same
time thoughtful and powerful'. Kapitza was delighted
that the carving would stay, and had Gill send a copy
of the carving to Bohr in thanks for the 'role he played
in saving its life'.
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