1 See Lee, Sabine (ed.), Sir Rudolf Peierls: Selected Private and Scientific Correspondence, 2 vols., London: Imperial College Press, 2008Google Scholar, vol. 2; Williams, Robert Chadwell, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy, London: Harvard University Press, 1987CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Braun, Reiner et al. (eds.), Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace, Chichester: John Wiley, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Turchetti, Simone, ‘Atomic secrets and government lies: nuclear science, politics and security in the Pontecorvo case’, BJHS (2003) 36, pp. 389–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Most historiography pertaining to Bronowski addresses his impact on American cultural concerns. For representative scholarship see Marie Novak, ‘Science: dilemma and opportunity for Christian ethics: Jacob Bronowski, a case study’, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, 1976; and Robert Joseph Emmitt, ‘Scientific humanism and liberal education: the philosophy of Jacob Bronowski’, PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1982. Bronowski has drawn limited attention by British historians. Noel Annan incorrectly associated Bronowski with C.P. Snow, claiming that Bronowski ‘enjoyed contrasting the scientific with the humanist mind’. Annan, Our Age: The Generation that Made Post-war Britain, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990, p. 382, added emphasis. Stefan Collini more accurately associated Bronowski with scientific intellectuals like C.H. Waddington, who addressed specialization as a subject in its own right. Collini, Stefan, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 457Google Scholar.

3 Shapin, Steven, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Edgerton, David, ‘British scientific intellectuals and the relations of science, technology, and war’, in Forman, Paul and Sánchez-Ron, José M. (eds.), National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology: Studies in 20th-Century History, London: Kluwer Academic, 1996, pp. 1–35, 22–23Google Scholar. See also Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006Google Scholar, Chapter 8.

5 For BBC collaboration with the Foreign Office Information Research Department see Webb, Alban, ‘Auntie goes to war again: the BBC External Services, the Foreign Office and the early Cold War’, Media History (2006) 12, pp. 117–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ortolano, Guy, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009Google Scholar. See also Edgerton, Warfare State, op. cit. (4), pp. 197–202. These and related points serve to underscore the particular value of individual case studies of scientific intellectuals as a means of refining national Cold War cultural histories; see, for example, Carson, Cathryn, Heisenberg in the Atomic Age: Science and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010Google Scholar.

7 Bronowski to Pars, 24 March 1933, L.A. Pars Papers, Modern Records, Jesus College, Cambridge.

8 Bronowski to Meggitt, 23 June 1934 and 18 July 1934, ‘Bronowski file’, Hull University Archives, Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull (hereafter HULL).

9 Bronowski, ‘Hitlerism’, Granta, 26 April 1933, in Philip, J. et al. (eds.), Best of Granta 1889–1996, London: Secker & Warburg, 1967, pp. 85–91Google Scholar.

10 ‘Socialist group’, The Torch (December 1941) 4(2), p. 37.

11 Jacob Bronowski, Personal File, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter TNA), KV 2/3523–3524. Considered ‘a Communist in everything but name’ during the war, MI5 advised the Home Office not to employ Bronowski ‘on any secret or confidential job’ (Serial nos 25–29).

12 Bronowski, William Blake, 1757–1827: A Man without a Mask, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1944Google Scholar. For Strachey see Senhouse to Bronowski, 13 July 1944, Jacob Bronowski Papers, Manuscript Collections, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto (hereafter BRONOWSKI), Box 133. Auden, W.H., ‘Mystic – and prophet’, New York Times Book Review, 14 December 1947, pp. 4, 27Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. xGoogle Scholar; Morton, A.L., The Everlasting Gospel: A Study in the Sources of William Blake, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1958, pp. 9, 86Google Scholar; Blunt to Bronowski, 5 March 1943, BRONOWSKI, Box 133.

13 In the post-war era, although MI5 came to learn that his mother and sister were Communist Party members (Serial no 79a), one MI5 interviewee maintained that his political views were merely those of ‘an unconventional but determined Socialist’ (Serial no 137). Bronowski, Personal File, TNA KV 2/3523–3524.

14 Bronowski, ‘Postscript’, Experiment 5 (February 1930), p. 35; Bronowski and James Reeves, ‘Towards a theory of poetry’, Experiment 4 (November 1929), p. 20.

15 Bronowski, The Poet's Defence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939, pp. 10–11.

16 Bronowski to Nicholson, 5 June 1946, HULL.

17 ‘R.E.8 was expanded in July 1942, to provide data of use not only to the Air Ministry, but also to the War Office and the Admiralty … In its expanded form the work of R.E.8 covered essentially the production … of scientific advice on certain aspects of operational technique – particularly for Air Staff work.’ A.R. Astbury, ‘History of the Research and Experiments Department, Ministry of Home Security 1939–1945’, TNA HO 191/203, p. 46.

18 R.B. Fisher, ‘Memorandum on the future of RE8’, 22 August 1945, TNA AIR 20/5369.

19 ‘Examination of the effects of the bombing of Japan. Note by the Air Ministry’, 25 August 1945, TNA AIR 20/5369.

20 Bronowski to Nicholson, 12 November 1945, HULL.

21 Bronowski, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Report of the British Mission to Japan, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1946, p. 19Google Scholar.

22 Bronowski to Nicholson, 25 July 1946, HULL. ‘Scientific Civil Service: Promotion of individual research workers’, Nature, 159, 5 April 1947, p. 464CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 In both cases, Bronowski failed to pass the vetting process, with MI5 citing his earlier involvement in radical left politics. Bronowski, Personal File, Serials 51–54 and 59–62, TNA KV 2/3523.

24 ‘Research in the coal industry: the Board's Central Research Establishment’, TNA COAL 33/29.

25 For a chronology of this project see Ralph Desmarais, ‘Science, scientific intellectuals and British culture in the early Atomic Age, 1945–1956: a case study of George Orwell, Jacob Bronowski, J.G. Crowther and P.M.S. Blackett’, PhD dissertation, Imperial College London, 2010, p. 70 n. 66. ProQuest order number U521038.

26 For Bronowski's involvement with the Labour Party's ‘Gaitskell Group’ see Horner, David, ‘The road to Scarborough: Wilson, Labour and the Scientific Revolution’, in Coopey, Richard et al. (eds.), The Wilson Governments 1964–1970, London: Pinter Publishers, 1993, pp. 48–71Google Scholar.

27 Rendall to Barnes, 22 June 1946, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (hereafter BBCWAC), RCONT 1 (‘Bronowski, Talks 1946–1949’), ‘Hiroshima Talk’. The report's release, timed to coincide with the American ‘Operations Crossroads’ test, aimed to assist the UNO in securing atomic energy control. ‘Effects of two atom bombs British survey in Japan, a “sombre” picture’, The Times, 1 July 1946.

28 Rendall to Barnes, 22 June 1946, BBCWAC, RCONT 1 (‘Bronowski, Talks 1946–1949’), ‘Hiroshima Talk’.

29 Barnes to Bronowski, 3 July 1946, BBCWAC, op. cit. (27).

30 Bronowski, The Military Uses (of atomic energy), broadcast 4 March 1947 on the Home Service, repeated on the Third Programme, BBCWAC, R51/33 Talks (Atomic Energy File 1). Bronowski, ‘The effects of the atomic bombs, Proposed Script for 4 March 1947’, TNA HO 196/30.

31 Bronowski, The Inward Eye: 2 – Journey to Japan, broadcast 5 December 1948, BBC Third Programme.

32 Blackett, P.M.S., Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, London: Turnstile Press, 1948Google Scholar.

33 Bradley, David, No Place to Hide, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948Google Scholar. Bronowski to Clow, 1 January 1949 and 5 December 1948, ‘Bronowski correspondence file’, BBCWAC.

34 Bikini or Bluff? was rebroadcast on the BBC Home Service, 22 June 1949; published in The Listener and in Civil Defence (April 1949) 49.

35 Desmarais, op. cit. (25), pp. 109–143.

36 ‘Any Questions 1941–46’, R51/23–5, undated, BBCWAC, p. 6.

37 BBC Listener Research Report LR/47/397, 22 March 1947, BBCWAC.

38 Bronowski, My Brother Died, BBC Third Programme, broadcast 27 April 1954, repeated 19 September 1955.

39 Bronowski, Science in the Making, produced by Dr G. Noordhof, BBC TV broadcast series, 14 August 1953 to 14 June 1954.

40 Stefan Collini, Absent Minds, op. cit. (2), p. 442.

41 Norman Luker to Anna Kallin, ‘Third Programme’, 23 July 1946, BBCWAC.

42 Letter, Bronowski to Anna Kallin, 12 August 1946, BBCWAC, RCONT 1 (‘Bronowski, Talks 1946–1949’).

43 Common Sense of Science Third Programme talks were first broadcast in April 1948, repeated on BBC Home Service (shortened to fifteen-minute talks) in June and July 1948, and on the BBC European Service in November 1948.

44 Bronowski, ‘Science, the Creator or Destroyer’, broadcast 19 April 1948. Radio script, 10 pp., BBCWAC.

45 Bronowski, op. cit. (44), pp. 5, 8A, 10.

46 Bronowski, The Common Sense of Science, London: Heinemann, 1951; reissued in 1960, 1962 and 1969.

47 Bronowski, op. cit. (46), pp. 125–128 passim, emphasis added.

48 Bronowski, ‘Science and human values’, Universities Quarterly (May 1956) 10, pp. 247–259; Universities Quarterly (1956) 10, pp. 324–338; and Universities Quarterly (1956) 11, pp. 26–42. See also The Nation, 183, 29 December 1956, pp. 550–566. Earlier published versions included Bronowski, ‘Science and values’, Ideas of Today (1952) 2(2), pp. 37–42; and Ideas of Today, Adult Education (1952) 25(2), pp. 98–99.

49 ‘Letters’, The Nation, 184, 19 January 1957. C.P. Snow, reviewing it later, wrote, ‘The habit of truth, on which science depends as no other human activity does, is in itself a moral habit … It is from this foundation that Bronowski has built a structure of values … with poetic feeling and a passionate identification with the human future. The result is at the same time convincing to the intellect, and curiously moving.’ C.P. Snow, ‘The habit of truth’, New Republic, 18 August 1958; and New Statesman, 21 April 1961.

50 Bronowski, Science and Human Values, New York: Harper and Row, 1958, reprinted London: Hutchinson, 1961, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964, and New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

51 Bronowski, ‘Science and human values’ (1956), op. cit. (48), p. 36.

52 Bronowski, ‘Science and human values’ (1956), op. cit. (48), p. 42.

53 Stapley to Bronowski, 23 February 1950, BBCWAC. Later similar Persian Service talks included Britain Is Planning to Make Full Use of Atomic Energy by 1956 (1954) and If the World's Oil Supply Suddenly Came to an End? (1954).

54 Bronowski, ‘Research of Household Fuels’, Proceedings, Convention of the Coal Utilisation Council, Harrogate, 14–15 October 1953, pp. 14–15. ‘National Coal Board reports’, BRONOWSKI, Box 139. See also Bronowski, ‘Atomic energy and the future of the mining industry’, Lecture, 28 October 1955, TNA COAL 97/1.

55 Bronowski, ‘Atomic peace’, The Times, 30 November 1950.

56 Bronowski, ‘My plan for peace’, Daily Herald, 10 January 1951.

57 MoD: ‘all types of weapons, including atomic weapons, are being developed’. House of Commons Debates, Hansard, vol. 450, col. 2117.

58 Bronowski, ‘Atomic Energy in Daily Life’, The Observer, 11 February 1951.

59 Bronowski, Atoms for Peace, broadcast 12 September 1951, BBC North American Service.

60 Bronowski, Atoms for Peace tss, 1 September 1951, p. 5, BRONOWSKI, Box 120, emphasis added.

61 ‘BBC Talks Script Booking Slip’, 13 May 1952, BBCWAC.

62 See also Cathcart, Brian, Test of Greatness: Britain's Struggle for the Atom Bomb, London: John Murray, 1994Google Scholar.

63 Hinton, James, Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in 20th Century Britain, London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989Google Scholar.

64 For example, Bronowski to Bryson, 14 February 1954 and 16 May 1954, BBCWAC.

65 Bronowski to Bryson, 20 February 1955, BBCWAC.

66 Taylor, Richard, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement, 1958–1965, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, p. 9Google Scholar.

67 Compare with Bronowski, ‘The educated man in 1984’, The Advancement of Science (1955) 12/301, reprinted in Science, 123, 27 April 1956, pp. 710–712.

68 Bronowski, ‘Scientists and bombs’, The Observer, 9 May 1954.

69 The signatories to Russell's petition, announced 9 July 1955 during a World Conference of Scientists in London, included six Nobel laureates. Amongst them were Percy Bridgeman, Max Born, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Linus Pauling and C.F. Powell. Press coverage was massive.

70 ‘The scientist's duty’, The Observer, 10 July 1955; ‘The dilemma of Klaus Fuchs’, Sunday Express, 10 July 1955; and ‘Dr. Bronowski on duty of scientists’, The Times, 11 July 1955. Bronowski's castigation of Fuchs drew a strong rebuke from the historian A.J.P. Taylor, who maintained that Fuchs had, in fact, prevented the Third World War. A.J.P. Taylor, ‘I say what I please’, Daily Herald, 13 July 1955; and Bronowski, ‘Bronowski answers Alan Taylor’, Daily Herald, 19 July 1955.

71 For his remarks at the World Conference of Scientists (London, 3–5 August 1955), see ‘World scientists’ unanimous vote. Need to end war’, The Times, 6 August 1955. For Bronowski's ‘Fuchs’ speech (Netherlands peace conference, 25 August 1955), see Bronowski, The Dilemma of the Scientist, London: National Peace Council, 1955. Addressing the Sixth World Parliamentary Conference on World Government (London, 26 July 1956), Bronowski shifted emphasis slightly, proposing that scientists could help living standards and spread information on the essential need for peace. Science for Peace Bulletin (1956) p. 10.

72 Bronowski, ‘The disestablishment of science’, Encounter (1971) 37, p. 916.

73 Werskey, Gary, ‘Communities of sciences’, Nature (16 July 1971) 232, p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Anthony Wedgwood Benn (Britain's minister of science and technology), ‘Towards a new dictatorship?’, Encounter (1971) 37(3), pp. 93–94.

74 Bronowski, Lessons of Science, Fabian Autumn Lecture, 3 November 1950, Fabian Society Publication, April 1951.

75 ‘A note about this issue’, The Nation, 183, 29 December 1956.

76 Bronowski, Atomic Challenge: A Symposium, London: Winchester Publications, 1947.

77 Bronowski and Mazlish, Bruce, The Western Intellectual Tradition, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1963Google Scholar.

78 ‘Dr. Jacob Bronowski: scientist and mathematician’, The Times, 23 August 1974, p. 15.

79 ‘Jacob Bronowski: a retrospective’, Leonardo (1985) 18, pp. 282–287.

80 Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, London: BBC, 1973, pp. 370, 435. In the only comprehensive history addressing Bronowski's wartime career, his statistical work is not associated with allied strategic bombing. Bernice Cattanach, ‘Jacob Bronowski: a twentieth century pontifex’, PhD dissertation, Northern Arizona University, 1980, pp. 21–22. Lisa Jardine gave a more accurate description in My Father, the Bomb, and Me, BBC4, first broadcast 9 December 2010; see also Jardine, ‘Dad's slide rule armageddon’, The Times, 28 November 2010.

81 Maurice W. Kirby, Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the 1930s to 1970, London: Imperial College Press, 2003, Chapters 4–5.

82 Representative research reports are: Bronowski, ‘Use of bombs with long delay fuses on raids on industrial cities’ (19 May 1943), and Bronowski, ‘The attack on railways (I). Bomb specifications’ (27 January 1944), TNA, HO 196/19 and 21.

83 Kreis, John F. (ed.), Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces in Operations in World War II, Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996, p. 368Google Scholar.

84 Bronowski, ‘The work of the Joint Target Group’, July 1945, 142.6601–5, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; cited in Kreis, op. cit. (83), p. 458 n. 38.

85 For the official British report on bombing effectiveness see BBSU: The Strategic Air War against Germany 1939–1945: Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit, London: Frank Cass, 1998. For contrasting historical arguments on bombing effectiveness see Overy, Richard J., The Air War 1939–1945, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005Google Scholar; and Tooze, Adam, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London: Allen Lane, 2006Google Scholar.

86 Sherry, Michael S., The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation Of Armageddon, London: Yale University Press, 1987, p. xiGoogle Scholar.

87 Bronowski, ‘Area attack against Japan. Blast bombs more profitable than incendiary attack’ (25 May 1945), TNA HO 196/30, emphasis added.

88 Kreis, op. cit. (83), pp. 380–388, 385.

89 Bronowski, ‘A moral for an age of plenty’, Saturday Evening Post, 233, 12 November 1960, pp. 24–25, 70–72.

90 Bronowski, op. cit. (89), p. 24.

91 Contemporary accounts include Lapp, Ralph E., ‘The death of Louis Slotin’, in Shapley, H. et al. (eds.), A Treasury of Science, New York: Harper, 1958, pp. 729–732Google Scholar; and Alsop, Stewart and Lapp, Ralph E., ‘The strange death of Louis Slotin’, Saturday Evening Post, 6 March 1954Google Scholar. A fictionalized version is Masters, Dexter, The Accident, London: Cassell, 1955Google Scholar.

92 Bronowski, op. cit. (89), p. 72. Emphasis added.

93 Bronowski, op. cit. (89), p. 25.

94 D.K. Froman and R.E. Schreiber, ‘Report on May 21 accident at Pajarito Laboratory’, 28 May 1946, in R.E. Malenfant, ‘Lessons learned from early criticality accidents’, report submitted to the Nuclear Criticality Technology Safety Project Workshop, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 14–15 May 1996 (online). Scientists then did not realize that it was not Slotin's reaction which had terminated the radiation burst, but the nuclear chain reaction's self-limiting nature.

95 Bronowski, ‘The creative mind’, Universities Quarterly (1956) 10, pp. 247–259, 247.

96 Edgerton, ‘British scientific intellectuals’, op. cit. (4), p. 20.

97 Young, R.M., ‘The scientist as guru: the explainers’, Science as Culture (1987) pilot issue, p. 140.Google Scholar