Obsessed by a Dream: The Physicist Rolf Widerøe – a Giant in the History of Accelerators

544 Pages·2020·6.718 MB·English

by  Aashild Sørheim

Springer Biographies
Obsessed
by a Dream
The Physicist Rolf Widerøe –
a Giant in the History of Accelerators
AASHILD SØRHEIM
Springer Biographies
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Aashild Sørheim
Obsessed by a Dream
The Physicist Rolf Widerøe – a Giant
in the History of Accelerators
Aashild Sørheim
Oslo, Norway
Translated by Frank Stewart, Bathgate, UK
ISSN 2365-0613 ISSN 2365-0621 (electronic)
Springer Biographies
ISBN 978-3-030-26337-9 ISBN 978-3-030-26338-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26338-6
Translation from the Norwegian language edition: Besatt av en drøm. Historien om Rolf Widerøe by
Aashild Sørheim, © Forlaget Historie & Kultur AS, Oslo, Norway, 2015. All Rights Reserved. ISBN:
9788283230000
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To Professor Tor Brustad
who handed me the baton
- and then cheered me on
Preface
I tell of a man of the world, tall and dark. Particular about his after-shave;
trousers carefully pressed; gallant; cheerful in dance and fluent in speech.
Knows where the martini glasses are stored, preferably in neat lines. Accurate
German grammar. Less accurate English, but enthusiastically expressive.
When he addresses a meeting his message is clear, whether it be about the
storage of atomic waste or the treatment of cancer.
He is working in the garden, wearing a Mao suit that he bought in China.
What will the neighbours think? As if he would bother about that. His wife
might, but not him. He has brought some plants from overseas, carefully
transported in test tubes in his hand baggage. Home now, he is planting the
cuttings carefully in his overgrown garden, which despite all his loving care
looks like a wilderness.
When he has a cold, he treats it by dipping a plug of cotton wool in red
wine and putting it in his nostril. Doses himself with dietary supplements
and just to be sure, thumps his chest seven or nine times. ‘Alternative med-
icine’ some ten years before it became fashionable, practised by a man who
has several honorary doctorates in medicine and is among the company of
the great physicists.
Even before he had completed his doctorate at the age of 25, electrical
engineering companies were lining up to headhunt him. Philips, AEG,
Siemens, Brown Boveri or ASEA—he has either worked there himself or has
good friends who are senior figures in one company or another. Ever since
his student days, he has been almost married to his job. But he reads a bed-
time story and says the evening prayer with his children every evening. On
Sundays he dons knee breeches, packs a thermos and a lunch pack and goes
vii
viii Preface
walking with his family, carrying a framed Bergans rucksack, Norwegian
1950’s style. The proper gear, no nonsense, and speaking Norwegian. That is
when we are Norwegian! Or he takes the car and the old, worn picnic basket
with the plastic plates, the cutlery fastened inside the lid with leather straps
and a methylated spirit stove to heat the sausages. When the nephews visit
during the school holidays he generously takes them along too, even though
they think he is a miser. The meal service doesn’t exactly match their expecta-
tions of what a famous uncle overseas can offer, but he is a bit odd, exciting
to be with, a perfect uncle.
Formative experience on the ski trails in the Nordmarka forest north of
Oslo has grown into a love of the Alps. His three children, one after another,
have to be taught the European style of downhill ski-ing. But first they have
to climb up, preferably alongside the line of the ski-lift. Or he takes them to
a chateau in France on a visit to the director of Martell, who apparently is
one of his father’s business contacts. Or at Easter to a big family gathering at
a friend’s cabin in the Norwegian mountains. Or to a summer gathering at
the family’s country house by the Oslo Fjord. High and low. Hut and coun-
try house. Never dull. Variety in abundance.
He became a father again at the age of 70. He registered over 200 patents,
in various countries. He has medals and honours from all around. He has
a research prize named after him. Plays tennis. Ice bathes in his own pool.
Swims every morning. Lectures every week, at a prestigious technical school
in Zurich. Is brought in as a consultant on major international projects.
Manufactures equipment for treating cancer. That is to say, that’s what he
really does. Either he has deceived the Germans during the war, or they have
deceived him. Or perhaps they have deceived each other, or us. Who knows?
But he doesn’t talk about that.
Rolf Widerøe is no ordinary man. Just by being himself, he has a pres-
ence, an aura. All who know him become excited when they speak of him:
family members, colleagues, others. A mixture of the socially awkward,
almost psychopathic, always-far-away-in-his-own-thoughts nerd and the
sensitive, warm, playful person, reliable and responsible. Some say he is
single-minded and thinks only about his research. But he is sociable, eccen-
tric, excitable, naïve. We could always turn to him when we had a problem.
He was close. He was distant. He saw us. He didn’t see us.
It all hangs together, but doesn’t fully make sense. Not all at once. Or
maybe it does. He was so many. You name it. It depends on having eyes to
see it. You need to have an eye for nuances, see things from several perspec-
tives, and not try to see everything all at once.
Preface ix
I would like you to meet this person, and I am almost certain you have
not heard of him before. But I am almost as certain that having met him,
you will wonder why he isn’t better known.
But first let me tell you a story of three people.
The Zarephath Widow’s Cruse
Once upon a time there were three men from different countries who hap-
pened to meet one and the same person, each in his own time and place.
None of them knew each other. The only things they had in common were
that they had once studied physics and that they had met a man who made
a strong impression on them. The first wrote a book about him. The second
tried to restore his reputation. The third tried to understand him. The man
they had met was Rolf Widerøe.
For the first of them, the story began with a gang of boys in Argentina
hearing wild rumours about one of Hitler’s miracle weapons. The story con-
tinued in Italy and Germany, and ended at Widerøe’s home in Switzerland
when Widerøe was 90 years old.
The second man’s journey was much less exotic—from a reading room
at Oslo University, via research laboratories at the Radium Hospital to the
Norwegian National Archives in Oslo. With laborious steps, within a radius
of just a few kilometres, a quiet drama was building up throughout the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century, culminating in material form as a bronze
statuette called ‘The Widow in Zarephath’.
The third man, the youngest, is still in America, wondering about some-
thing he heard one May day behind the 400 year old walls of Rosendal
Manor amid the fruit blossoms of Hardanger. It has little or nothing to do
with what he himself is known for, but it is relevant to current ethical debate
about how far a researcher can go in pursuit of his goal.
Each of these three will tell us about his Rolf Widerøe. They all have
doctorates, but we are not talking science here. They point out, from their
own perspectives, their views of a man entangled in rumours and mystery,
famous abroad but cruelly and deliberately hidden and forgotten in his own
land. Their narratives combine in the story of the German, the Norwegian
and the Dane who find themselves ‘In a hotel in North Italy’, ‘In a shielded
bunker in the Radium Hospital’ and ‘In a grand seventeenth century house’.
x Preface
The German
Pedro Waloschek needs to write a book about him.
In a hotel in North Italy where they are attending a conference, two col-
leagues are sitting in the bar one evening. They are both physicists, in their
thirties and of Jewish origin. They both grew up in Austria. One is called
Pedro and one called Bruno. They have had unsettled lives, but they both
now live in Italy and they try to meet at conferences. There in the hotel by
Lake Como, they spent a long evening as Bruno spoke about an amazing
boss he had once had, who sorted out all sorts of things for him, even in his
private life. Pedro told me later that his friend Bruno seemed a little eccen-
tric, but the two of them had similar backgrounds and spoke the same dia-
lect. Even their surnames were rather similar, Waloschek and Touschek, and
they enjoyed talking together.
That August evening, Bruno spoke about his life during the war. Because
his mother was a Jew, he was expelled from high school, where however by
a little manipulation of the system he had managed to sit the exam. Then
he was excluded from the university in his home town of Vienna. He tried
to study in Rome and planned to continue in Manchester, but ended up
instead in Berlin to study mathematics and physics, aged 19. There he
worked secretly for the Luftwaffe, tasked with doing calculations on a pro-
ject involving radiation, with none other than Rolf Widerøe as his boss.
Pedro continues the story:
My friend Bruno told me that he had been assistant to an unusually talented
electrical engineer from Norway, from whom he had learned a lot. Not only
that; this boss had visited him when he was in prison in Hamburg after he had
been caught in the act of reading foreign magazines in a library and arrested
by the Gestapo. The Norwegian had visited him, bringing cigarettes, schnapps
and his physics notes.
At the conference in Varenna, Bruno told many stories about the
Norwegian. He admitted that for a while he had thought Widerøe was fol-
lowing a false trail. He seemed obsessed by what he thought was a brilliant
idea to build an accelerator that was more effective than any that had been
built before. Widerøe hadn’t given up on the idea. He was sure it was revolu-
tionary—and he had been right.
Pedro came away with an impression of a remarkable Norwegian who was
determined, thoughtful, clever and persevering. A man to be taken seriously.