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A. V. Hill, as he was generally known, was a physiologist and one of the founders of biophysics and of operational research. A Cambridge graduate, he served in the Army in the First World War undertaking ballistics research; his peacetime work was on muscles, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1922. He was a professor at University College London from 1923 to 1951. In 1935 he worked with Patrick Blackett and Henry Tizard on the committee that gave birth to radar. In 1933, he was a founder member and Vice-President of the Academic Assistance Council (later the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning) which, in particular, assisted refugee Jewish scientists to re-establish themselves in the British academic establishment.

With Blackett he resigned from Tizard’s Aerial Defence Committee in 1935 because of Lindemann’s manoeuvrings and later was highly critical of his influence on Churchill. Prior to the 1940 Tizard Mission to the USA, Hill went to Washington to sound out his American contacts on their likely reaction to such an initiative; his positive report was a factor in persuading the British Government to proceed with the mission. He knew many leading scientists well, had many influential contacts and, inter alia, recommended Blackett’s appointment to Anti-Aircraft Command. He served as an independent MP for Cambridge University in 1940–45. He took part in many scientific missions to the US. He was appointed OBE in 1918 and also elected FRS; he became a CH in 1946.

American military science was the responsibility of the National Defense Research Committee, whose establishment was authorised by President Roosevelt after reading a paper by Vannevar Bush, the head of the Carnegie Institution. Bionote in Chapter 10.

As the USA and UK had a similar approach regarding the scientist-military relationship there was close Anglo-American technical collaboration throughout the war, with nationals from both countries working alongside each other. Often devices developed in the UK were wholly manufactured in the USA; for many weapons and machines this became Britain’s arsenal, with American productive technology manufacturing most of the ships, tanks, aircraft, and armaments that eventually overwhelmed the Axis powers (see Chapter 6).

The fact that Anglo-American technologists had virtually a free hand to develop novel equipment, coupled with the immense productive capacity of the USA, meant that Anglo-American leaders were blessed with equipment vastly superior to that of their enemies.

After a mere 21 years of uneasy peace, the world was at war again – a war in which technology would play a crucial role in securing victory for Britain and her allies. Meanwhile in a mansion in Buckinghamshire, many brains were already hard at work trying to decipher the enemy’s messages…