Scientists.

This is coolbert:

I think it can be safely said that World War One [WW1] can be categorized as a war of industrialization and mechanization. Man's significant inventions of the twentieth century, flight, the internal combustion engine, etc., and the harnessing of the mass industrial output of a nation for the war effort, these are all characteristics of WW1.

It is also safe to say that World War Two [WW2] was a science war. Man's science was harnessed in the war effort to construct newer and more devastating weaponry, culminating in the atomic bomb. Scientists on both sides of the conflict, Allied and Axis, played a continuous game of ones-up-man-ship in an effort to stay ahead of the opposition.

Many great scientists, mostly physicists, but not entirely confined to that discipline, played significant parts in the war effort. In the years after the war, many of these scientists became famous in their own right for important discoveries and accomplishments.

One such scientist is Gordon Welchman.

While working at Bletchley Park, Welchman was instrumental in developing the first techniques that allowed for British cryptologists to "break" German secret messages sent via the now famous Enigma cipher machine. These first "breaks" led to an understanding of how to read intercepted Enigma messages on a real time basis, rendering invaluable support to the Allied war effort.

Welchman was in the years subsequent to the war instrumental as well in developing packet technology. Without packet technology, the internet and computer technology as we know it would not be possible, period.

"(pak´it) (n.) A piece of a message transmitted over a packet-switching network. See under packet switching. One of the key features of a packet is that it contains the destination address in addition to the data. In IP networks, packets are often called datagrams."

Richard Feynman is another scientists who did yeoman's duty during war, and came to great repute after the war.




As a member of the staff for the Manhattan Project, Feynman, at the age of twenty one [21] !?!? was in charge of the human computers that did the calculations for the a-bomb project, all calculations having to be done by hand or with the assistance of electro-mechanical calculators [computers as we know them now were not in existence at the time].

In the years following the war, Feynman was awarded two Nobel Prizes for his discoveries in physics!!

Yet another physicist who contributed significantly to the war effort was William Shockley.



While working as an operational research analyst [you may remember that in a previous blog entry I have mentioned that the Germans were the first to apply operational research analysis in a military sense] for the U.S. Navy, Shockley, through a process of inspired questioning and analysis of statistics, was able to correctly advise the Navy as to what depth to set depth charges at when attacking German submarines during the Battle of the Atlantic. Shockley's correct advice proved to be an important part of the whole in winning the Battle of the Atlantic.

After the war, in 1947, Shockley, with two other colleagues, is credited with the discovery of the solid-state transistor, a discovery for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. As the computer as we know it today [the modern PC] is considered to be the greatest invention of the Twentieth Century, Shockley can therefore be said have been the hand that got the ball rolling, solid-state technology being absolutely instrumental to the modern PC! Indeed, the entire phenomenon of Silicon Valley can be credited to the myriad of spin-off companies from the original commercial venture of Shockley's, Fairchild Semiconductor!

In the 1970's, the reputation of Bill Shockley fell into disrepute as a result of his controversial and probably ill-conceived observations regarding eugenics. It was claimed that Shockley, a physicist, not a biologist or geneticist, had no business intruding into an area where he had not education or experience. Shockley responded that his experience as an operational research analyst made him eminently qualified to make the pronouncements that he had made [whites were inherently intellectually superior to blacks].

Finally, the British physicist Freeman Dyson made significant contributions to the war effort as an advisor and analyst for British Bomber Command.



The strategic aerial campaign of the allied air forces over Germany during WW2 was very intense combat wise and also technology wise. Both sides employed all the latest scientific apparatus and electronic measures at their disposal to gain the upper hand. This was technology, counter-technology, and counter-counter-technolgy warfare. Dyson did analysis on the effectiveness of these measures and made recommendations based upon statistical analysis, perhaps based upon the same methods used by Shockley. The quotes of Dyson on German resistance to the strategic bombing offensive are very telling:

"In the closing stages of the war, the fighters earned the admiration, even of some their enemies, like scientist Freeman Dyson.

DYSON:

"The night fighters and their supporting organization put up an astonishing performance, continuing to fight and cause us serious losses until their last airfield was overrun and Hitler's Germany ceased to exist."

"They ended the war morally undefeated. They had the advantage of knowing what they were fighting for, not in those last weeks of the war, for Hitler, but for the preservation of what was left of their homes and families, their cities and their people. We had given them, at the end of the war, the one thing they lacked at the beginning, a clean cause to fight for."

Following WW2, Dyson's career as a physics professor branched into many areas of research and study, such as:

"In the years following the war, Dyson was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of quantum electrodynamics which existed at the time -"

"From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion project, which demonstrated the possibility of space-flight using nuclear propulsion:"

"In one of his scientific papers, Dyson theorized that a technologically advanced society could completely surround its native star in order to maximize the capture of the star's available energy."

"Dyson has also proposed the creation of a Dyson tree, a genetically-engineered plant capable of growing on a comet."

Dyson continues to this day as a most profound, learned and imaginative scholar!!

coolbert.