Some famous Irish communists
J. D. Bernal
(1901–1971)
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In 1927 he was appointed a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he quickly gained a reputation as a pioneering physicist. His name has been given to the “Bernal chart” (an important tool for deducing the structure of a crystal from photographs of X-ray diffraction patterns), invented by him in 1926. His work was characterised by a crossing of boundaries, not only between physics, chemistry and biology but between science and society—a product of his Marxist world view, though his membership of the CPGB appears to have lapsed after 1933.
In 1938 he was appointed professor of physics at Birkbeck College, where he remained for the rest of his career. During the Second World War he worked on the design of landing-craft and on “Mulberry,” the floating harbour that played an important role in the D-Day landings in 1944. He himself landed at Normandy on the day after the beginning of the invasion.
He wrote numerous influential books on science policy and the history of science, including The Social Function of Science (1939), The Freedom of Necessity (1949), The Physical Basis of Life (1951), Marx and Science (1952), World Without War (1958), A Prospect of Peace (1960), and The Origin of Life (1967).
Bernal was concerned about the way in which scientists from newly independent and neo-colonial countries were enticed to richer countries (a process that has increased alarmingly since then); it was apparently he who coined the term “brain drain” to describe this phenomenon.
During most of his career he was prevented from attending scientific conferences in the United States. He helped to establish UNESCO and the World Federation of Scientific Workers, and in 1953 he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.
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