Volume 28, Number 20 · December 17, 1981
One Culture
By Rudolf Peierls
The Physicists
by C.P. Snow
Little, Brown, 192 pp., $15.95
C.P. Snow had an unusually wide range of interests and many different talents, but he probably was at his best in crisply summing up people and situations. I recall from my own experience the occasions when he used to visit the universities during the war, with his friend and assistant William Cooper, to decide the fate of students about to graduate in science. Each student had to be assigned to some branch of the armed services, or to a research project of military importance, or perhaps to further research training. On the strength of the paper record and a two-minute interview, he would give a thumbnail sketch of the personality and ability of the student, which usually could not be improved upon the teachers who had known the student for years.
Review, 2276 words
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