Cryogenics in Oxfordshire Harry Jones*, Clarendon Laboratory ...

Cryogenics in Oxfordshire
Harry Jones*, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. Office, room number 166
Room 166, so? Isn’t that too much information? Well …….
In 1968, an apprehensive 23 year old (me) was taken into that office to be
introduced to the great Professor Nicholas Kurti CBE FRS.
*19 days into his 49 th year in cryogenics and magnets
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In effect, we have to thank Adolf Hitler for cryogenics in Oxfordshire
And
Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell) Head of the Clarendon
Laboratory.
Anti Semitism in Germany in the 1930s was rife. This gave Lindemann
the idea to offer refuge to top quality Jewish physicists especially
those who worked in the area of low temperatures. The result: Franz
(later Sir Francis) Simon, Kurt Mendelssohn, Heinrich Kuhn and ……...
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Nicholas Kurti who had been Simon’s student and post doc
in Berlin and Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).
“
”
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Low temperature work really took off in the Clarendon laboratory in
the 1930s
As did magnetic fields. We all know, now, that magnets need low
temperatures – liquid helium etc, but these were the days before
superconducting magnets (although Mendelssohn was writing to
Nature suggesting superconducting PbBi wire magnets as long ago as
1933).
Back then, it was the other way round. High magnetic fields were
needed to get low temperatures, i.e., adiabatic demagnetisation
of paramagnetic salts. Hence the famous 2 MW ex tramways
generator that allowed fields up to 12.5 T in the Clarendon
By 1956 Kurti achieved a millionth of a degree kelvin using
nuclear demagnetisation and Parks Road Oxford was the
coldest spot on earth. In 1960 Kurti repeated the experiment
on live television (Tomorrow’s World) and the record stood for
18 years (see Guinness Book of Records!)
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The legacy of all this seeped into Oxfordshire – and elsewhere.
•Oxford Instruments, the university’s first spin out company was founded – See
Audrey’s excellent book “Magnetic Venture”
•Another Clarendon Man, Jeremy Good (Mendelssohn’s student), founded a
company called, Cryogenic
•Mendelssohn founded the journal “Cryogenics” in Oxford
•Yet another Clarendon man, Ralph Scurlock, founded the Institute of
Cryogenics in Southampton
•Kurti was a co-founder of the British Cryogenics Council (its current chairman
is a Clarendon man …..)
•John Cosier and Mike Glazer (both Clarendon men) founded Oxford
Cryosystems (Long Hanborough)
•Heinz London proposed the 3 He/ 4 He dilution refrigerator at a conference in the
Clarendon “The Harwell fridge” that was developed by OI.
•And, of course, Harwell, RAL (or NIRNS as was) and Culham (the famous
Goodall chart) were all strong centres of cryogenics. Although, until 1974, they
were in Berkshire NOT Oxfordshire.
I’m sure there’s lots I’ve forgotten / didn’t know in the first place.
You might call the above “direct impact”………………
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How did things spread ?
This is not in chronological order
•After OI, other “cryogenic” companies formed sometimes from OI
•Thor Cryogenics Magnex (ElScint) - Berensfield
•Technology Systems (brief but existed) - Witney
•AS Scientific – Abingdon
•OMT (Eynsham) morphed into Siemens Magnet Technology (SMT)
•Thames Cryogenics - Didcot
•Scientific Magnetics (previously Space Cryomagnetics) - Abingdon
•ICE Oxford
•Cryophysics - Witney
As previously listed: Cryogenic 1 and Cryosystems
1
Not in Oxfordshire
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So, Hitler and the Clarendon Laboratory have a lot to
answer for. Lots of cryogenics over some 80 years (of the
hundred or so years of LHe and superconductivity) not
exclusively Oxfordshire of course but rather Oxford –
centric.
And here we are today, in Oxfordshire with the Cryogenic
Cluster
CRYOGENIC CLUSTER - The Most Powerful
Concentration of Cryogenic Expertise on
Earth
and
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