J.D. Bernal: A Life in Science and Politics

An eminent molecular physicist and path-breaking crystallographer, an eloquent and prescient writer on the social implications of science, an early foe of pseudo-scientific racism and an indefatigable campaigner for peace and civil rights: as a scientist and a Communist intellectual, J.D. Bernal was caught up in many of the dramas of the twentieth century.

As Eric Hobsbawm describes here, Bernal played a major role in the dynamic ‘red science’ movement of the 1930s, whose ideas on links betw...