Cherwell, Frederick Alexander Lindemann (1886–1957)

British physicist, scientific adviser to the government during World War II. He served as director of the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, 1919–56, and oversaw its transformation into a major research institute. Baron 1941, Viscount 1956.

Lindemann was born in Baden-Baden, Germany, and studied at Berlin, leaving on the outbreak of World War I 1914 to become director of the Royal Air Force Physical Laboratory, where he was concerned with aircraft stability. From 1919 he was professor of experimental philosophy at Oxford. He was also a member of the government as paymaster-general 1942–45 and 1951–53, helping to direct scientific research during World War II and to create the Atomic Energy Authority afterwards.

Together with German chemist Hermann Nernst, Lindemann made an advance in quantum theory in 1911 by constructing a special calorimeter and measuring specific heats at very low temperatures. They confirmed the specific heat equation proposed by Albert Einstein in 1907, in which he used the quantum theory to predict that the specific heats of solids would become zero at absolute zero. Lindemann also derived a formula that relates the melting point of a crystalline solid to the amplitude of vibration of its atoms.