The South Bank Centre is running a series of talks on the relationship
between science and literature in which writers. poets and scientists discuss
how scientific ideas over the past two centuries have influenced literature
and social change.

The first talk, ‘Frankenstein’, was given by Marilyn Butler, Regius
Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, and illustrated
with readings by Jo Shapcott who also read her own poems. In exploring the
‘best known text of English romanticism’, Mary Shelley’s ghost-story-turned-romantic-novel,
Butler dismissed the modern icon of Frankenstein as the archetypal mad scientist
who is punished for playing God. Instead she proposed a more enlightened
interpretation of the story’s significance as an allegory for the radical
social and scientific theories of the late 18th century. (Shelley wrote
the ghost story in 1816.)

Butler pointed out – to a full house – that the Shelleys were familiar
with scientific ideas of the day, in particular, theories of the origin
of life, heredity and sexual selection, and the role of Man as a social
and moral animal. The volumes of Franken-stein are based on these themes.

In the series of seven talks, Maggie Gee and Steven Copley have talked
about writers and the effects of agriculture and industry on the landscape
in ‘Environment’, and Stephen Clucas and Abdul Malik discussed the role
of alchemy, magic and early science in literature. Still to come are: ‘Body
and Mind’, 11 February, in which medical historian Roy Porter and poet UA
Fanthorpe explore medicine and literature; ‘Truth, Proof and Perception’,
18 February, a forum led by writer Karen Armstrong and mathematician Ian
Stewart to compare scientific and literary knowledge; ‘Time and Space’,
3 March, Sarah Lefanu and Michele Roberts look at women writers and science
fiction; and ‘Making Waves’, 11 March, Gillian Beer and Peter Didsbury explore
how modern physics has influenced writing.

*Tickets are available at £2.50 from the Box Office, The Royal
Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London SE1 8XX, telephone 071 928 8800.

The physicists, Gianni Fiorentini and Ettore Fiorini, want the lead
for experiments that are of critical importance in particle physics and
cosmology. Donatella Salvi, an archaeologist working with the Italian authority
for artistic and historical heritage, wants to know more about the Mediterranean
lead trade in the first century BC.

The ship was discovered two years ago near an island called Mal di Ventre,
so-named because of the high wind that plagues the area. It was modified
to carry lead and is the only one of its type known.

The physicists want the ancient lead for a practical reason. Lead is
the best material for shielding delicate experiments which detect minute
amounts of radiation, for example from the unusual kinds of radioactivity
associated with double beta decay, or from the rare interaction of neutrinos
– the ghost-like particles that are emitted from the Sun and pass through
the Earth unheeded. Another experiment requiring shielding is the detection
of particles of so-called dark matter – the material believed to hold the
Universe together.

Such experiments are usually carried out deep underground in specially
built installations, such as the Gran Sasso Laboratory near Rome. Here,
1400 metres of solid rock protect the detecting apparatus from high-energy
cosmic rays raining through the atmosphere. Small amounts of radioactive
materials in the rocks themselves, however, can interfere with the experiments,
so the detector has to be surrounded by an additional lead shield.

Commercial lead has only tiny amounts of radioactive contaminants such
as lead-210, but even this is enough to affect very sensitive experiments.
However, the half-life of lead-210 is 22 years, which means that lead excavated
a long time ago would have lost most of its radioactive component. In fact,
physicists have sometimes relied on lead from old cannonballs for their
experiments.

Lead that is 2000 years old would be expected to contain virtually no
radioactive isotopes at all. The physicists, when they tested a small portion
of a salvaged ingot, found this was the case.

What will the archaeologists get out of the salvaging project? Apart
from the 300 million lire (£135 000) from the institute, the physicists
have agreed to analyse the ingots to establish their geological origins
and set up a database for archaeological studies. Each ingot has a manufacturer’s
mark and the researchers hope that the data will help them to map the trading
routes that once served a flourishing Roman metallurgical industry.

Porter is not only a major figure in scientific public life (he was
director of the Royal Institution before going to the Royal Society), but
also has a formidable reputation as a researcher, having won two Nobel prizes
for chemistry. So it is not surprising that he raised the profile of the
Royal Society when he defended science as a cultural activity and ‘one of
the pillars of civilisation’.

During hs term of office, Porter often discussed science policy with
the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet. He criticised the government’s
short-sighted commitment to funding only research that leads to commercial
products. The Prime Minister must have listened, eventually. According to
Porter: ‘In the last four or five years, she became convinced that basic
science is very important and that only government can fund it.’

Porter has equally strong advice for the new incumbent of Number 10.
But will John Major, who left school at 16, understand, or even be interested
in, the two main concerns of scientists: funding research and science education?
‘In some ways, ignorance is better than bias,’ says Porter., ‘I’d rather
have someone who is self-educated across the board than someone who has
been educated into not just a non-science but an anti-science philosophy.
That’s just what happens with people who take PPE (philosophy, politics,
and economics) at Oxford.’

It is exactly this attitude that bedevils industry, asserts Porter.
‘The leaders of industry have no sympathy or understanding of science. The
chairman of a company is responsible to the shareholders and they are not
interested in research that will affect what the company will do in 10 years
time.’ Porter wants to see ‘near-market’ research done by industry not universities.
The amount of money that goes into applied research as a percentage of industries’
profits in Britain is very low compared with Germany, France and Japan,
he points out.

So what advice does Porter offer? One approach that may appeal to Major’s
financial head is to give companies tax relief for research. Another idea
is to make hostile takeovers more difficult. Porter believes that such takeovers
damage a company’s research effort.

But it is about the funding of academic rather than applied research
that Porter has the most radical suggestions. ‘I’m getting very fed up with
many aspects of the funding system. In absolute terms funding has increased
by 5 per cent, yet all of us in basic science – physics, chemistry, mathematics
and biology – feel like paupers. It’s impossible to exaggerate how awful
it is.’

Porter blames this situation on the way the research councils distribute
money and on the recent strategy of directing research from the top downwards.
He is particularly cynical about the interdisciplinary research centres
(IRCs) set up to foster mainly strategic areas of research (in other words,
those thought to have economic importance). ‘The Science and Engineering
Research Council and the Medical Research Council are nearly bankrupt. Yet
they started 17 of these IRCs and are talking about have 43. They couldn’t
possibly contemplate funding any more until they fund the good people that
already exist. I think that the IRCs are the reason for there not being
enough money for basic research,’ says Porter.

A large part of the science budget is already sucked up by institutions
run by the research councils. Centres such as SERC’s Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory are seen by some as wasting money. Porter thinks that young researchers
suffer as a result. ‘Only a small percentage of funds go in what we call
responsive mode funding (researchers applying directly to a research council
for research grants). I don’t think that is enough.’

What Porter really wants is to see science run by scientists. ‘You might
think that the research councils are run by scientists, but they are not,
you know; there are a lot of civil servants involved. I would like to see
an alternative – a second funding body that people can apply to.’ Porter
suggests that the Royal Society would fit the bill because it consists of
a large group of distinguished scientists carefully chosen by their peers
from all the disciplines. ‘What I envisage is a kind of national science
foundation – a science council – of which the Royal Society is a trustee
and a general supervisory body.’

So Porter wants to see most research based back in the universities
and firmly married to teaching.

Education is the other subject on which Porter has strong views. He
would like to change A-level education so that all pupils take at least
five subjects, including at least one science and one language, similar
to the Scottish system. ‘The matter is urgent,’ says Porter, ‘we must now
take the decision to broaden the country’s educational system and extend
it to all.’ Porter thinks that a wider education would help to disperse
the anti-science attitudes found in government, the media and the civil
service.

Whether Major will take science seriously remains to be seen, but Porter
will try to put forward the scientist’s view: ‘I hope to have the opportunity
to speak to him in a very short time, about education and the role of the
Royal Society. I don’t know much about him but I’m told that he’s a listener.’

* * *

Major, empathy for science?

A Delegation of scientists will meet John Major to press for a new deal
for science. In a bid to win over Conservative MPs during the party leadership
contest, Major promised Sir Ian Lloyd, a Conservative MP and president of
the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, to meet the scientists.

According to Lloyd, Major promised to consider these steps:

Raising the level of government funding for science in real terms to
stop Britain falling behind its competitors;

Funding POST, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, from
the public purse for the first time;

Merging the science select committees of the two Houses of Parliament.

‘I generally got a favourable response,’ said Lloyd this Monday. He
said Major was sympathetic to raising the profile of science in parliament
and there could be an annual debate on the science budget. This could mean
the recommendations of the Advisory Board for the Research Council would
be made public again.

Under Thatcher, the government never accepted the argument that Britain
needed to match the public science spending of its competitors. This attitude
could now change, and Major’s readiness to give more support to science
could mean that last-minute cuts in projects – such as those announced by
the research councils last month – could become a thing of the past.

My son does not like mathematics. But since he started playing the electric
guitar, he has been nagging me for posters of that intriguing mathematical
object, the Mandelbrot set. He wants to pin them next to life-size pics
of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Living Colour and the other million rock heroes
that decorate every centimetre of his bedroom. ‘Mum’, he once said, rather
archly in front of his heavy metal mates, ‘Mandelbrot’s always telephoning
you. (A slight exaggeration; he telephoned me once at home when he wrote
a recent feature for the ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ chaos series.) Can’t you ask him
where I can get a poster or teeshirt of one of his sets?’

The reason for this request is that the intricate graphics of chaos
have caught the imagination of the young. The only Soup Dragons album has
a Mandelbrot set on its sleeve, and the neopsychedelic ‘New Edge’ movement
now springing up in some clubs has taken the colourful iteration as its
icon.

Well, as it happened, the famous mathematician could not help my son.
But now I know a man who can. Just in time for Chritmas, and not far from
Portobello Road in London, Gregory Sams opened ‘Britain’s first shop dedicated
to the revolutionary new science christened Chaos Theory’. Called Strange
Attractions (what else?, the shop/gallery sells posters, greeting cards,
badges, mugs and teeshirts, all carrying different fractal images. And if
you really want to keep the kids quiet after Christmas lunch, buy one of
the formidable looking jigsaw puzzles – which are enough to keep any burgeoning
cyberhippy well away from the New Edge.

Sams says he launched the shop because he was spending so much of his
free time generating the images on a ‘top of the range’ AppleMac that he
decided to turn the fruits of his effort into a commercial venture. But
he is also buying in designs from other firms and intends to develop further
innovations.

Prices vary quite widely but there is something for everybody. Posters
cost between 2 Pounds and 15 Pounds, and teeshirts from 7 Pounds to 20 Pounds.
You can get badges and stickers as stocking fillers from 10 p to 50 p, while
there are framed prints costing up to 300 Pounds.

*Strange Attractions, 204 Kensington Park Road, London W11. Tel: 071-229
9646.

Now, however, two research groups have independently suggested an intriguing
theory that scientists say is worth taking seriously. Speaking last month
at the Bioelectromagnetics Society in San Antonio in Texas, Valeri Lednev,
a biophysicist at the Soviet Institute of Biological Physics in Puschino,
proposed that a weak oscillating magnetic field could loosen the bonds between
metal ions and some proteins in the body. Many proteins vital for metabolism
contain metals.

Two British researchers, John Male of the National Grid Research and
Development at Leatherhead in Surrey, and Donald Edmonds of the Clarendon
Laboratory in Oxford, aired a similar theory.

The key observation seems to be that the biological effects only happen
around particular frequencies of the oscillating magnetic field. What is
more, these frequencies seem to depend on the presence of a steady background
magnetic field such as that of the Earth. These conditions are reminiscent
of a phenomenon that is called cyclotron resonance.

If a free charged particle moves in a constant magnetic field, it accelerates
so that its path bends into a circle. The frequency at which the particle
circulates, the so-called cyclotron resonance frequency, depends on the
mass and charge of the particle and on the strength of the field. Add a
second magnetic field that oscillates at the same frequency and the particle
accelerates further – an effect exploited by particle physicists in accelerators.

When biophysicists experimented on various living cells, using steady
weak magnetic fields and oscillating weak magnetic fields, they observed
biological effects, such as changes in the way marine organisms called diatoms
move about.

They found that the most effective frequency corresponded to the cyclotron
resonance frequency for a particular ion, calcium, an extremely important
metal in living systems, which is known to affect the behaviour of diatoms.
It seemed that the cyclotron resonance frequency of calcium could be the
link between magnetic fields and cells in living creatures, including humans.

Unfortunately, this theory was shot down by several objections: first,
the radius of the cyclotron orbit for the calcium ion, at one metre, is
very large. A calcium ion affected in this way in an organism would collide
with another molecule in the cell before making even a fraction of one orbit.
Also, in a biological environment, the calcium ion would be surrounded by
a tight shell of water molecules that would alter its cyclotron frequency
anyway.

The new approach discussed at San Antonio seems to be more plausible.
It considers what happens to a calcium ion bound in a calcium binding protein,
calmodulin, when placed in static and oscillating magnetic fields. The ion
is continually vibrating about its equilibrium position in its binding site.
Applying a steady magnetic field causes the plane of vibration to rotate,
or precess, about the direction of the magnetic field at a frequency that
is exactly one-half of the cyclotron frequency of the bound ion.

According to the British and the Soviet researchers, adding a wobbling
magnetic field at the cyclotron frequency disturbs the precession to such
an extent that it could loosen the bond between the ion and the protein.

Lednev says that he has already tested the theory on a biochemical reaction.
He found that the phosphorylation of myosin, a muscle protein, which depends
on the binding of calcium in calmodulin, was several times as great in the
presence of a steady field equal in strength to the Earth’s magnetic field,
together with an alternating field of the same strength.

If the theory is right, it could explain how overhead power supplies
might affect people’s health and possibly cause cancer. But it could also
lead to new therapeutic applications of magnetic fields. For example, many
diseases can be attributed to too little or too much calcium in the body.
Applying magnetic fields could provide a simple non-intrusive way of modifying
the calcium levels.

Messing about with a collection of mirrors, lenses, bits of wire and
batteries at the school bench may seem to have little to do with anything,
other than usually failing to get the required straight line on a piece
of graph paper to verify some not-quite-understood equation.

Poor teaching combined with unimaginative course work often gives girls
the impression that physics is dry, dull and difficult with little relevance
to ‘life’, whether of the everyday kind or more loftily as in ‘life, the
Universe and everything’. Most overworked schoolteachers are more concerned
with getting to grips with the GCSE or A-level syllabus than putting physics
into a broader cultural and social context. They rarely point out that physics,
once called natural philosophy, underpins our understanding of nature, and
that physics graduates rarely visit the labour exchange.

Small wonder then that the majority of teenage girls, who are generally
more socially aware and practically minded than their male contemporaries,
decide that physics is not for them. However, a con ference held at University
College London last month is trying to change that situation. The event
was the third in a series of sixth-form conferences called ‘Women in physics’.
UCL started the conference partly for political and economic reasons. Its
physics department, like those of many other British universities, has found
it difficult to attract good students. Grade C passes in two science subjects
at A-level is enough to secure a place.

UCL realised that girls represented a huge untapped source of potential
physics undergraduates. So it decided to try to persuade girls that physics
is fun to study at university, especially in a college in the heart of the
metropolis, and that a physics degree can lead to an interesting career.

The conference successfully managed to give its 115 attendees a feeling
for the excitement of the subject. The various speakers demonstrated how
physics is a quest for knowledge on a grand scale, with discussions on cosmology,
particle physics and a trip to the university astronomical observatory.

There were talks on the more practical sides of physics in industry
and medicine. Caroline Bowry, a research physicist at the GEC Hirst Research
Centre, pointed out that the company was striving for a more balanced intake
of men and women graduates. During the three days of the conference, the
girls also had the chance to carry out simple laboratory experiments using
equipment and materials not available in the average school lab, such as
liquid nitrogen and dry ice.

Grabriella Branduardi, an Italian physicist and one of the organisers
of the conference, was anxious to point out that physics is fun to do and
not as difficult as people think. Branduardi is surprised that physics is
considered a boys’ subject in Britain. She blames the narrowness of the
education system with its overspecialisation between 16 and 18. In Italy,
no one is allowed to drop science at this age, she says, so girls have more
time to come to grips with the subject.

Nevertheless, things are changing. The enthusiasm pervading the conference
showed that typical teenage girls sporting the latest skinny mini or trendy
fluorescent cycling shorts, who are into dancing to Prince or Soul 11 Soul
are, nowadays, just as likely to be into electronics and astronomy. This
year, there were twice as many applicants as places for the conference.
Other physics departments should take note.