Homage to Gaia (31 page)

On the negative side, the one thing that bothered me about my work with civil service agencies was their failure to appreciate the value of the ideas and inventions that they generate and apply. In America, there is always a constant watch to see if any idea that comes up constitutes a patentable invention, from which the inventor or the organization can profit. In addition, of course, society itself profits. Wonderful ideas would spin off in Britain, and I have seen this happen throughout my scientific life, but no one would ever bother to patent them. We complain bitterly when others patent and profit from our ideas and we complain even more when we have to pay them royalties for our own intellectual property—penicillin being the most
outrageous
example of this. It’s not anybody’s fault really; it is just that there is no feedback. There is little direct benefit to a civil servant in patenting an idea, since he will gain nothing from it. It will also mean a lot of work dealing with lawyers and I do not underestimate just how much work is required to patent something. For this, the country or the organization may have a reward but not the individual civil servant. So it is small wonder that there were always more urgent things than the patenting of bright ideas, but we have all lost because of this. I do believe that things are now better, but the fact that they are legally better and rewards are available, does not immediately produce results. It will take time for the culture of reward to move in, and as things are now, I think we have no option but to take it on.

Our tribal nature affects science as much as any other human activity. I soon found that our work at Holton Heath was strictly limited to chemistry; I suppose we were fortunate enough to have so large a field to roam in. I knew, though, that there were better ways of achieving our practical aims by using other scientific methods, for example, those in the disciplines of physics or biology. For many years, the internal tribal barriers between the sciences successfully prevented us from using our brains and our skills to answer urgent practical problems in the best way, not just a chemical way. Reasons such as the ‘need to know’ and the avoidance of departmental friction were used to frustrate our efforts. All of this was to the disadvantage of the service itself. I cannot too strongly stress my belief that the best results do not come from setting physicists, chemists, and biologists in isolated competition. They come from allowing the best group to
emerge from a free association of all of them. The organization of the civil and military services is such that there is little hope of achieving this scientific nirvana. We need to keep it in mind, though, as a counsel to perfection.

The belief that the employment of a hundred qualified scientists will always do a hundred times as much as the employment of one of them is foolish but persistent. Generals know that they can train and inspire a group of fit young men to become fine soldiers. Their success in war will depend on good leadership, plenty of ammunition, and preponderant numbers. It does not work like this in science. Most universities have become like the fast-food industry. They package products that are safe, consistent in taste, but rarely surprisingly good. One or two scientists with a true vocation, aided by some skilled and dedicated technicians, are worth hundreds of lumpen graduates or PhDs and they are far less expensive. There is not enough natural selection at work. The incompetent who would not have survived in the commercial world suffer no more than a lack of promotion, or sometimes even tactical promotion to a position where they are merely a nuisance and cannot do damage. On the other hand, the service showed an impressive concern that no device we proposed would adversely affect the health of those under surveillance. Cynics might say that this was from a fear of lawsuits, but whatever the reason, the message given by the press that they were violent and unaccountable just did not wash. Fortunately for all of us, our civil service is a benign institution. It is accountable, although indirectly. My strong impression is that security services as part of it are also accountable, but in a different way. The security services share with the health service a degree of professional dedication that to some extent offsets the indirect accountability of state-run enterprises. Perhaps a life spent close to the sharp end brings out the best in physicians and security agents. My work for the security services has rewarded me with some real friends and the wonderful consolation that at least I have done something to counter acts of terrorism, not just ground my teeth in frustration.

During my years with the Security Services I developed an instinct for discretion. This was invaluable in my work with multinational companies and other government agencies, where I discovered much more about their workings than I needed to know. Fiction and political activists usually portray these large and powerful entities as malign and acting against the public good in a conspiratorial way.
In all my years as an independent scientist, I never encountered a conspiracy, but cover-ups were ubiquitous. The most enduring human trait seems to me to be cronyism; as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘We must all hang together or assuredly we shall hang separately.’

Avondale in Pennsylvania is not far from the huge chemical industrial activity of Wilmington, the home city of Dupont. In 1962 the air of that region often carried a smell of chemistry, and the water tasted of things in addition to the chlorine used to disinfect it, but Avondale also had a rural air; there were fields and woods and many mushroom farms that used a great deal of fresh dung. This agricultural smell mingling with that of organic chemicals from Wilmington gave the region an unforgettable and evocative aroma, and the first time I smelt it was on a visit from Houston one morning in February 1962. I was there to discuss with F and M Scientific the use of the electron capture detector. F and M was a small but vigorous firm started a few years previously by three Dupont scientists with an entrepreneurial inkling, and they manufactured gas chromatographs. This is something that happens often in the United States and plays an important part in its economic success. Young men with ambition will leave the safe career status of a large organization like Dupont and seek their fortunes by starting their own business. Sadly, this is
something
that only rarely happens in the United Kingdom.

Jim Peters, who worked for F and M, met me at Philadelphia Airport. He was a tall young man with a strange accent, which soon resolved into a mixture of South Africa and Liverpool. To hear it made me feel homesick and from that visit on, we became firm friends. Jim was my technical contact for the visit that lasted two days and for many years afterwards. I often stayed with him and his wife, Chris, and he visited me in England. The efficiency and professionalism of F and M in 1962 impressed me. They understood and used my detector well. Al Zlatkis and I had formed a small firm called Ionics Research and we made a know-how agreement with F and M Scientific. Few outside industry seem to understand how important ‘know-how’ is. Possessing the patent of an invention is like having the seed of a fruit tree. You cannot harvest the fruit until the seed is planted, tended while growing, and unless there is the wisdom to wait until the fruit is ripe and ready to be picked. Know-how covers all these details and is
just as valuable as the patent itself. Part of the agreement was that I should visit the firm twice a year to discuss problems and further developments. The owners of the firm took me to lunch at the Brown Derby restaurant in a nearby village. The restaurant was one of those dark wooden buildings so common in New England; and the food, which included their speciality, crab cakes, was edible and sufficient. This visit was to start a routine of visits there that was to last, for me, thirty-two years. To meet with a group of friends and enjoy a pleasant memorable routine in between mornings and afternoons of
challenging
practical problems is one of the delights of doing science
independently
.

I was not alone in thinking that this small firm was unusual in its competent efficiency. Hewlett Packard, the fast-growing and
first-class
electronic giant, was seeking to develop a chemical instrument stance and had looked at firms like F and M all over the United States. Within a year, they chose to take over F and M and make it a part of their empire. It was a benign take-over and they rewarded the owners well and the technical staff were retained, but the capacity of the company was infused and enhanced by the expertise of Hewlett Packard’s powerful electronic divisions. I could not help comparing it with the slow sad destruction of the equivalent British firm of WG Pye. This firm also had built excellent gas chromatographs but when the European giant Phillips took it over, a promising small industry that could have served the UK well, vanished within a few years.

At the time of the takeover of F and M, the benign quest for excellence that had been the aim of Hewlett and Packard, the
founders
of the firm, was still a potent force. Creativity was encouraged, and with it there was a tolerance of eccentricity; this is something that makes a proper habitat for invention and for the talented craftsman. There were some able but very odd people working at Avondale. At one time, the plant had its own foxhunt. Workers on flexi-time, who started at some early hour of the morning, would finish work at lunch and then dress in their red coats and riding gear and take off across the open country of Pennsylvania. Because it was a bottom-up hunt, it was not seen as a symbol of class warfare, and there were no hunt saboteurs. Indeed, the notion that hunting was cruel never seemed to surface. In England, the hatred of the hunt is somewhat hypocritical, and its emotional drive comes more from class war than from
compassion
for the fox. Some, I think, see the red coat of the huntsman as a powerful symbol of the sempiternal British class war, with those on
their horses the rampaging cavalry of the ruling classes. As I write this, it astonishes me that the British Parliament is wasting its time voting for a bill to abolish hunting with dogs. My mother’s family, all avid Hardy readers, also hated hunting and hunters, and I grew up in an atmosphere strongly prejudiced against the hunt. It was relieved, however, because my father, a true countryman, knew that the
cruelties
of hunting, perceived by city people who knew nothing about it, was as nothing compared with the daily cruelty of farm life. This was true in his time and it was to worsen when animals were condemned to the Belsens of battery houses for chickens, cattle, and pigs. I am ambivalent about the hunt. The sight of it stirs me as a colourful spectacle and I would not vote for its abolition, but I would not join it. Often on visits to Jim Peters, I would discuss work problems as we took a country walk across the fields and through the woods. Jim and Chris Peters were both from an urban environment in Liverpool, but in their new life in Pennsylvania, they had their own horses, enjoyed riding them, and seemed to find nothing odd in doing it. To give the flavour of my many visits to HP over the years let me tell how I arrived in the USA for one of them.

Philadelphia is an easy airport to arrive at—quiet compared with the pressure of Kennedy in New York or London’s Heathrow—and this was particularly true near the end of the 1980s. I was quickly through Customs and there was the minibus for my journey to the motel at Chadds Ford. Getting aboard it was like listening to a soap opera after missing a few episodes. The driver was a casually dressed grandpa and the service was a family business. Soon the minibus was full of
passengers
and we were on the busy road towards Wilmington—and almost immediately, we were part of the family saga. The radio link to Grandpa’s home bore news of domestic disasters. The basement was flooded, why hadn’t he returned to fix it? Grandpa yelled back, ‘How can I fix it when I am driving the damned bus? Why doesn’t your lazy nephew fix it?’ By the time the bus dropped me at the Chadds Ford motel, I felt again that I was a part of real America. The girl at reception checked me in and asked me if I was having dinner that evening. ‘No,’ I said, ‘It’s midnight now for me; I most of all want to sleep.’ She nodded, and added, ‘If you dine tomorrow, eat only the appetizer and dessert, the entrées are terrible.’ It was a good reminder, for a year earlier I had spent a night of severe indigestion following an unwise meal at the motel. The food was far too rich and spiced for me.

Next morning Bruce Quimby, a senior scientist at HP, came at 8 o’clock to take me to breakfast. He proposed that we go to
McDonald’s
. It was my first visit to that bastion of Imperial America and I was curious to see what it was like. We parked and walked across to the dining room where Bruce ordered a substantial meal, at least an Egg McMuffin, followed by something equally substantial. After a frantic search of the menu for something light enough, I gave up, and merely had an orange juice and a coffee. We then travelled the back roads of the Pennsylvania countryside and arrived at HP’s Avondale plant at about 8.45 am. Good companies nearly always employ lively and helpful receptionists who do much to set the mood of a visit. HP was no exception and a warm and welcoming woman signed me in and gave me my stick-on label marking me as a visitor. We walked towards the research and development department passing and saying ‘Hi’ to Mason Byles, at that time Manager, and sitting at his
open-plan
desk like everyone else. Successful managers seem to understand the need for visibility and accessibility. Managers in closed rooms guarded by protective secretaries are sometimes the sign of a badly run organization.

The R & D department occupied a large hall, lit by discreetly hidden fluorescent lights and filled with parallel rows of workstations. Walls about six feet high enclosed each of these. Inside the walls were desks, bookshelves, seats and computer screens. Somehow, looking from above, it appeared like a patterned carpet spread across the floor. At intervals, longer low walls marked off conference areas furnished with one large table, a blackboard, and about ten chairs. We made for one of these, stopping en route to pick up some more coffee. Tea was available but I have found from bitter experience that when in the United States it is better to drink coffee. The tea is anaemic stuff that tastes as if recently they had exhumed it from the bags thrown into Boston Harbour all those years ago. Around the table was the
detector
group with whom my first discussions were to be. The problem today was with the flame photometric detector, a strange device that senses nitrogen-containing substances specifically. It is useful, even invaluable, for detecting illegal drugs. I was glad that I had not invented it. It is notoriously erratic.