Solly
Zuckerman was born in Cape Town, South
Africa on 30th May 1904. He studying at the University of Cape
Town he travelled to London in 1926 to complete his studies at University
College Hospital Medical School.
He
soon established himself as a leading figure with the Zoological Society.
He carried out research into primates and published several books
including The Social Life of Monkeys and
Apes (1932) and Functional Affinities
of Man, Monkeys and Apes (1933).
Zuckerman
joined the faculty of Oxford University
in 1934 and during the Second World War he carried
out several research projects for the government. This included working
with John Bernal on the impact of bombing
on people and buildings.
After
the war Zuckerman was professor of anatomy at Birmingham University
(1946-68) and chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence
in 1960. Later he was chief scientific adviser to the British government
(1964 to 1971). Knighted in 1956, he was awarded a life peerage in
1971. Zuckerman's autobiography, From Apes
to Warlords, was published in 1971. Solly Zuckerman died
in 1993.
(1)
Tom
Hopkinson, Of This Our
Time (1982)
During
this winter (1940) I met again someone I had come across a few years
earlier at Chelsea parties. This was J. D. Bernal, a professor at
Birkbeck College known to his friends as Sage, partly because of his
vast fund of knowledge and partly on account of his enormous head
with its shock of wavy hair. Sage had now teamed up with another still
more celebrated young professor, Solly Zuckerman, best known at that
time for his studies of apes. During the course of the war they would
together undertake a whole series of important assignments, but at
this moment they were looking into the precise effects of bombing
both on people and on buildings, into which it seemed very little
research had previously been carried out. Their immediate concern
was a casualty survey for which they would travel up and down the
country to wherever some incident appeared to demand investigation,
and I listened fascinated while they told me what they were doing.
"Well,"
I said, "now you've found all this out, suppose you give me some
simple precautions for getting around safely over the next few years?"
"We
could, of course," Sage answered. "But it's a waste of time
since you certainly won't act on them."
I objected
that his attitude was unscientific; how could he know without putting
the matter to the test?
"Very
well," he said, "we'll see. If bombs are falling, lie face
downwards in the gutter. Gutters give good protection - blast and
splinters will almost certainly fly over you. But in case you do get
injured, always wear a notice round your neck. Something conspicuous
- about the size of a school exercise book."
"Why
do I need that?"
"The
effect of blast is to pressurize the lungs - equivalent to suddenly
giving you pneumonia,' he explained. 'So if a Heavy Rescue man or
a sixteen-stone air raid warden kneels on your chest to administer
artificial respiration, you've had it! Your notice will say "Weak
Chest. Don't touch," or words to that effect. You're a journalist-
you can think up your own form of words."
"Thanks,"
I said. "But if I'm lying in the gutter with my notice, I can't
be moving around."
"Oh,
if you want to move around - that's easy! All you need to do is wrap
an eiderdown tightly round you. It absorbs the
blast and protects your lungs. But of course it won't be much help
against splinters."
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