Mathwar/Personlist/Lindemann Frederick
Frederick Lindemann
(* April 5th 1886, † July 3rd 1957)
English physicist who was an influential scientific adviser to the British government, particularly Winston Churchill. He advocated the wartime carpet bombing of German cities, and was a strong doubter of the existence of the Nazi "V" weapons program.
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destinationFrederick Lindemann
Life
In the 1930s, Lindemann advised Winston Churchill when the latter was not in Government and leading a campaign for rearmament. Lindemann also helped a number of German Jewish physicists, primarily at the University of Göttingen, emigrate to England to work in the Clarendon Laboratory. Several of these German physicists subsequently worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb.
When Churchill became Prime Minister, he appointed Lindemann as the British government's leading scientific adviser, with David Bensusan-Butt as his private secretary, and later to the ministerial post of Paymaster-General. He would hold this office again in Churchill's peacetime administration.
Lindemann established a special statistical branch within the government, constituted from subject specialists, and reporting directly to Churchill. This branch distilled thousands of sources of data into succinct charts and figures, so that the status of the nation's food supplies (for example) could be instantly evaluated. Lindemann's statistical branch often caused tensions between government departments, but because it allowed Churchill to make quick decisions based on accurate data which directly affected the war effort, its importance should not be underestimated.