Time and Prof. Zacharias

JERROLD ZACHARIAS, brilliant scientist, invented an atomic clock so accurate that in 2,000 years it will not be more than half a second wrong.

Yet he said to me: “My watch runs a little fast. This I like because I know it will never be slow, and I would rather be early than late for an appointment.”

This exemplifies the realism of Professor Zacharias in his two fold approach to the timeless problems of science and the day-to-day problems of life as we live it.

Prof. Zacharias, who is, among other things, a military adviser to the U.S. Government, is here in Britain to give the last of the Granada Lectures on Wednesday. His subject is “Teaching and Machines.”

He is a short, rather stubby Bostonian with iron-grey hair and dark bushy eyebrows. He is well-dressed. He deliberates deeply before talking and underlines his points with careful movements of his hands.

Listen to his comments:

On teaching: “If I cannot make people understand a subject then I don’t understand it myself.”

On nuclear weapons: “They have reached such a stupid stage that the human race can no longer continue to play with them. They must learn to live with them.”

On physicists: “He is a kind of chemist, only he doesn’t smell so bad.”

He told me, in a quiet voice with clipped American accent: “I am here to lecture because I feel I have something to say about what we are doing in the United States to make our schools good.

“There is a difference in making schools good, rather than just making them better. This applies to the whole world, not only America. This is why I feel what I have to say will particularly interest the British public.”

Dr. Zacharias first began to study physics at Columbia University.

During the war, he worked at the radiation laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on radar development. In 1944, he directed the engineering work on the atomic bomb, and later established a laboratory of nuclear science, studying nuclear-powered flights, undersea warfare, air defence, and the Distant Early Warning Line.

For his brilliant technical services, Dr. Zacharias was awarded the U.S. President’s Certificate of Merit in 1948 and in 1955 received the Department of Defence Certificate of Appreciation — its highest honour.

I asked him, as one of the leading boffins working on the A-Bomb, if he has conscientious qualms about the horrific effects the weapon has had on mankind. His reply: “No. People were killing themselves wholesale for hundreds of years before I was born.”

In 1956, Dr. Zacharias, with a number of other professional physicists, switched his attention to improving the teaching of physics in American secondary schools. Why?

“Because we realised the most important thing we could achieve was educating the young,” he said. “We wanted to raise the quality of science education, and, at the same time, try to stop the wave of anti-intellectualism that had sprung up in the post-war world.

“If humanity is not educated it is exposed to every evil that besets mankind. I trust an educated person. I do not trust an uneducated person. Why? Because an educated person has the power to react properly. He has the power to reason. Without this power, he can be swayed by demogogues and glib leadership.”

As a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, Dr. Zacharias originated the idea that film aids and special texts should be used to improve physics teaching in high schools.

His ideas led to a Physics Science Study Committee in America, which conducted a crash programme to develop an entirely new high schools physics course. Within two years, 20,000 students in 600 schools were taking the course.

Said Dr. Zacharias: “My principle is that in order to learn something, you have to participate in it. I learned more about London by driving around the city than any guide book could have taught me.

“It’s the same with any subject. You want to learn about the atomic clock? Right, come to the laboratory and I will show you. I don’t think you would understand if I tried to explain verbally.”

I asked Dr. Zacharias what sort of educated world he hoped to see in, say, 25 years time? He replied: “My aim is a world in which men are men and not mice. My world is a world of independent thinkers.” Now what of Dr. Zacharias, the man? “I am,” he admitted, with a quiet smile, “a very impersonal man. I have so many interests, so much work to do. I enjoy coming to Britain because it gives me the opportunity to argue with friends here. What do we argue about? The same as everyone: beliefs, science, humanity.”

Finally, how did Dr. Zacharias wish to be remembered — as an atomic physicist or pioneering educator? The reply typifies the man. He said: “I never worry how I might be remembered. There is a saying that you get some thing done or you get credit for it. I want no credit for what I can do, even from the eye of eternity.”