The Northern Lights, page 21
I must admit that I am thankful to the Madam that she stopped me in my examination of the tube for if I had gone any further I would have blown my fingers off.
Jesus, what a woman! We could easily enter the darkest Middle Ages if we give in to monsters such as Mrs. Wriedt. I am giving my scientific name and reputation as a guarantee that the medium, Mrs. Wriedt, is a cunning swindler.
In principle, I am against burning witches, but a teeny weeny fire in honor of Mrs. Wriedt would not be out of place.
His article stirred up a heated debate in the capital that led to the condemnation of the growth of spiritualism and religious cults in Norway and to the idea of setting up a Psychical Society, whether scientific or not. Birkeland thoroughly disapproved of the séances and was pleased to have exposed the fraudulent antics of the medium, but the episode had made him acutely aware that the collapse of his marriage had been his fault. He had been very disturbed by Kaya’s admission that Ida had been attending séances secretly during the year before she left him. That he did not know his wife had enjoyed the performances of a duplicitous American spiritualist revealed to him how little interest he had shown in her. He wished he had declined the invitation to lead the committee—it had been a sad distraction—and retreated to his laboratory.
IN JANUARY 1913 Birkeland arranged a public lecture to demonstrate his terrella machine and to announce the theories emerging from his work on the Northern Lights. He was planning to publish the second volume of his treatise later in the year and wished to rekindle interest in his work. He would simulate sunspots, the solar corona, the Zodiacal Light, Saturn’s rings, comet tails, and other cosmic phenomena that no one in the audience would ever have seen before. He would draw the solar system into his glass box and explain how all these cosmic events could be understood as aspects of the same phenomenon that created the Northern Lights: the electromagnetic power of the sun, the very source of the solar system. He announced the event in Aftenposten and within a few days had news that the king of Norway wished to attend. King Haakon had followed Birkeland’s progress since his first visit to Norsk Hydro in 1908, when the professor had explained aspects of the furnace design to him, clearly and absorbingly. The title of the lecture was announced as “The Creation of Our Solar System and Other Worlds in the Universe” accompanied by the world’s first “terrella demonstration,” to be given in the Festival Hall of the university where Birkeland had infamously demonstrated his cannon.
On the day of the lecture, 31 January, the king walked from the palace along Carl Johan Gate, attended by a small retinue of friends, family, and retainers, all intrigued by the professor’s latest invention. As usual, the king was wearing a naval uniform, since he had trained as an officer and served as Supreme Admiral of the Fleet. He rarely wore anything else in public as his great height made suits look ungainly on him. Once in the hall, he was ushered to the front row.
Birkeland knew that his lecture involved such advanced physics that no one in the audience would truly comprehend his overall theory. He was possibly the only man in the world who had the breadth of knowledge to create his own cosmogony based on the laws of electromagnetism. In this gathering of the capital’s elite, no other person could know whether what he said was true. At the last moment he decided to abandon his sophisticated talk and instead to take the audience on a journey around the solar system in the terrella, accompanied by simplified explanations of his theories. The hall lights dimmed and the box started to spin with miniature suns, planets, and comets. Birkeland began:
To understand the distances that I have captured in this vessel, imagine that our sun is a grain of sand a millimeter in diameter. In that case, the Earth would be an invisible speck of dust ten centimeters away. And the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be twenty kilometers away. It is in this vast, infinite space that the genesis of all celestial bodies is to be found. All matter that we see, be it our own bodies, our Earth, other planets, the sun, our solar system, and other solar systems, all matter is composed of flying atoms that are continuously ejected from our sun and other suns by electrical forces and that condense to form particles. And these in turn condense to form large spheres, ultimately planets and all thereupon. It follows from this that everything that is matter, all living beings in the universe, is linked, one to the other.
Sitting inches from the sun, Saturn’s rings, and a comet, the audience was spellbound by Birkeland’s words and the dazzling worlds that were unfolding before them. Few had any previous inkling of the grandeur and mystery of space, the teeming activity within it and the forces that ruled beyond the boundaries of Earth.
It seems to me to be true, from what I have already said, that new worlds emerge in space more frequently than human beings are born on the Earth. Each world has its éclair de nuit, its flash of lightning in the dark, the struggle of intelligent beings with their thoughts and their discoveries to banish ignorance. Such moments of illumination disappear without trace, and it also follows that such worlds must die more frequently than human beings die upon the Earth or, more accurately, they are born and die in such a number that surpasses our imagination.
Although he received positive reviews in Norway for this lecture, the printed versions that appeared in science journals elsewhere received little comment. In France, where his work was usually well received in the Academy, it was largely overshadowed by the tragic news that his scientific mentor, friend, and supporter, Henri Poincaré, had died, aged only fifty-eight, after a simple operation. Poincaré had been Birkeland’s champion on the international stage of science; his loss was a personal and professional blow, soon to be followed by others.
At the end of January Birkeland received a letter from Tønnes, informing him that their mother was ill and unlikely to recover. He boarded a train for the five-hour journey to Porsgrund and found her sitting quietly in a large armchair by the stove, a frail figure wrapped in shawls and blankets. Birkeland had little to talk about; he did not want to burden her with news of his divorce and she would not understand the progress he was making in his scientific research. He held her hand and sat in silence. After she had gone to bed, Tønnes explained that she might last for a few weeks but no more. Birkeland stayed for four days but left after realizing that his presence was tiring her. The day after he returned to the capital, Tønnes called to say that she had died, aged seventy-one.
Birkeland’s mood became distracted and depressed and he resorted again to veronal and whisky to help him sleep. His divorce papers arrived in the mail in March at the end of a winter of unmitigated grayness. He occupied himself with the final corrections to his manuscript for the second volume of The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition but as soon as they were finished he fell ill with an ear infection that confined him to bed for several weeks.
When Aschehoug, the oldest publisher in Norway, which had produced the first part of the book, published volume two in the early summer, Birkeland felt a sense of pride in the photographs of the terrella, the breadth of the content, and the originality of his ideas. No other study of the Earth’s magnetism had ever been as thorough and complete as this. His work was overshadowed, however, by scientific developments occurring elsewhere. Einstein’s special theory of relativity was published in 1905, and only a few months before Birkeland’s book appeared Niels Bohr announced his model of the atom in which electrons orbited the nucleus as the planets orbit the sun. Physics was taking scientists into new atomic worlds that seemed more exciting than the grand sweep of the visible solar system. Although Birkeland’s ideas were too far ahead of their time to be fully understood, they also seemed curiously old-fashioned. His work, which had once caused intense disagreement, was now met by a wall of indifference.
In the second volume of his book, Birkeland wrote:
We have arrived at results that seem to us so valuable, that they have rewarded us for the exertions and personal sacrifices that the work has cost.
He still believed this to be true, despite his poor health, broken by overwork to fund his research, his drinking, a failed marriage, his alienation from the industrial giant he had helped to create, his mother’s death, the criticism and resentment of his colleagues at the university, and the lack of acceptance or recognition abroad for his theories. He was still sure that what he had discovered justified the path he had chosen, yet he could not face another grinding winter in Christiania, tired and alone. Following Birkeland’s most recent illness, Tønnes had advised him to drink less whisky, keep his use of veronal to a minimum, and move to a warmer climate until he had recovered his full strength. Birkeland’s thoughts turned again to Egypt. There he might find what he needed, both to gain acceptance for his theories and to recover his health. The terrella experiments led him to believe that the Zodiacal Light was the only phenomenon visible from Earth in which one could directly measure the amount of electrically charged particles thrown out from the sun. It lay beyond the Earth’s magnetic field, allowing electron beams, or cathode rays, to be studied before they were affected by the magnetic field of the Earth. The auroras, by contrast, were the light trails of the tiny fraction of electrons not deflected by the magnetic field. The Zodiacal Light was perhaps the faint but visible evidence Birkeland needed to prove that the sun did emit cathode rays that could extend throughout the solar system—the last brick he needed to complete his theoretical house. If he could find a way to measure the cathode rays, even his critics at the Royal Society would be forced to accept his theories.
Birkeland spent the summer making preparations to leave the country, closing up his house, telling friends and colleagues of his plan to travel to Egypt and the Sudan and informing Krogness in Haldde that he would send a telegram upon his arrival so that they could coordinate magnetic observations between Northern Norway and the equatorial zone. The two assistants Birkeland chose to travel to Egypt with him were Karl Devik, who was talented at performing experiments and whose company Birkeland greatly enjoyed, and Thoralf Skolem, a young, gifted mathematician who would help with theoretical calculations concerning the Zodiacal Light. In an act of extreme generosity that also showed Birkeland planned to be away for several years, he wrote to the Senate of the university:
Professor Kr. Birkeland declares by letter to the Senate that he conveys a gift to the university of all his machines and instruments located at the Department of Physics. The professor does, however, reserve the right to use the equipment.
In the late summer, once preparations were complete, Birkeland went to the Swan Apothecary on Carl Johan Gate. It was an alluring shop, muraled on the ceiling with swan designs in cooling greens and blues. The back wall was entirely given over to narrow drawers in classical columns, their smooth wood punctuated by white enamel labels denoting their contents. Birkeland asked for two bags of veronal, which the pharmacist provided reluctantly, warning the professor that side effects had been reported. Birkeland did not listen. From the pharmacy he walked across the square to Rådhusgata to the offices of the Meridian Shipping Company. He bought a firstclass ticket to Alexandria, stopping in London and Marseilles, leaving the following week.
PART III
Zodiacal Light
Kristian Birkeland dressed as the Prophet during his stay in Omdurman, Sudan, late 1913. Courtesy of the Norsk Hydro Archives
14
The Dusty Disc
Autumn 1913
Alexandria, Egypt
May you enter favored, and leave beloved.
Ancient Egyptian prayer
BIRKELAND,Karl Devik, and Thoralf Skolem arrived in Alexandria at the beginning of October. At the docks, porters in long, loose robes unloaded the crates of scientific instruments. They were being sent directly to an observatory south of Cairo where Birkeland had arranged with the British director for them to be kept until the spring. Egyptian customs officials, overseen by a British observer, stamped their import papers and painted the crates with the delivery address: KHEDIVIAL OBSERVATORY—HELWAN. In the meantime, Birkeland, Skolem, and Devik would travel to Omdurman in the Sudan, where Birkeland had decided they would stand the best chance of observing the elusive Zodiacal Light. The subtle phenomenon was most clearly visible in equatorial regions, where the sky grew dark more quickly after sunset than it did further north. Here, the Zodiacal Light formed a nearly ninety-degree angle with the horizon, making it less likely to be obscured by mountains or buildings, and the weather in Africa afforded many more clear, cloudless nights for observation than in Norway.
They stayed that evening at the Cecil Hotel, having driven there in an open carriage through narrow streets behind the Abu el-Abbas el-Mursi Mosque and the Corniche, the graceful waterfront of the eastern harbor. The hotel had a long mahogany reception desk staffed by Englishmen with hushed voices, several large paintings of the late Queen Victoria, and a pair of the latest electric lifts whose wrought-iron grilles and polished wooden doors were controlled by Egyptian bellboys in full livery. From Birkeland’s room a tiny balcony looked over the eastern harbor and the squat fort of Qait Bey, the medieval Mamluk stronghold built on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse, which had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Birkeland recalled Lieblein’s lectures about the once great entrance into Egypt; this bay had been the stage for over two thousand years of history. Alexander the Great decided to build the capital of his empire on the site of the tiny village that had stood here and it grew to rival Rome, attracting great scholars like Euclid and Archimedes to its library. Mark Antony arrived here to be with Cleopatra, a relationship that led eventually to their suicides and the sacking of Alexandria. The city was left to decline until a few decades before Birkeland’s arrival, at which time it was redeveloped by the rulers of Egypt, the khedives, as Egypt’s principal port.
The train to Cairo, from where they would travel to the Sudan, did not depart until morning and so they decided to attend the evening piano recital advertised on the hotel’s bulletin board. Birkeland’s deafness, caused by radio experiments he had conducted as a student, made concerts rather hard work but the program looked interesting: Bach, Debussy, Brahms, Scarlatti, Rameau-Lechetizky. They found the torchlit passageway between a jeweler’s and a coffee shop that led to the theater, a striking building whose architectural features perfectly reflected the history of the city—Greek pillars, a Roman lintel, and papyrus decorative reliefs interspersed with elaborate Egyptian wrought-iron lanterns.
The audience at the concert was primarily European, although there were a few Egyptian men wearing western dress but sporting the deep red fez on their heads. Although Alexandria was now the first port of Egypt and the main gateway to Africa, the city felt more Mediterranean than African, and often more Greek than Egyptian. The khedive of Egypt during the first half of the nineteenth century, Muhammed Ali, had encouraged immigration in the hope of improving trade with Europe. Workers had arrived from Italy, England, and Germany but mainly from Greece. Greek businesses thrived in Egypt, exporting cotton, manufacturing cigarettes, running restaurants, and financing new businesses.
The performers were introduced in Greek and a slender woman in her mid-thirties walked on stage, leaning on the arm of a young man carrying a violin. The woman’s name, deciphered by Birkeland from the Greek program notes, was Miss H. Spandonides; the initial was never elaborated into a full Christian name, unlike that of her accompanist, Efstafiou Likouvi. Miss Spandonides had a very pale complexion and wore a dress modeled on an ancient Greek tunic, white with geometric patterns around the neck, hem, and sleeves. She appeared too fragile to play with much gusto, but after a few bars, it was clear that she was a very fine pianist. For two hours the Norwegian scientists sat among Greeks listening to European music in the heat of an Egyptian night. They returned to the hotel bar afterwards and were soon joined by the pianist and her friends, with whom they struck up conversation. Miss Spandonides was not on tour but had given the concert to please some friends who lived in Alexandria. The main purpose of her trip was to take a cure for several months in Helwan, twenty-five kilometers south of Cairo, where she would stay at the Tewfiq Palace Hotel. The three men agreed to call upon her should she still be there when they returned from the Sudan.
The following morning, Birkeland, Devik, and Skolem caught a train to Cairo, the first railway connection in Africa. It had been built with British technology imported when the British invaded Egypt in 1882 under the pretext of protecting her citizens from discontented Egyptian nationalists. In fact, it was primarily an excuse for the British to interfere in the affairs of this strategically important country. The train rattled across the Nile delta, where the landscape had changed little since pharaonic times. It was a picturesque scene of small, fertile fields tended by families of peasants in long robes and dresses of striped cotton, with donkeys and small carts. Despite the fact that they made only a precarious living from the land, on them fell the main burden of Egyptian taxation and the expenses of the British occupation. Although they did not experience any hostility, the visitors soon became aware of the political tensions and social divisions in the country. As the train left the fields behind, the mud shacks of Cairo’s outskirts came into view, swiftly followed by houses of several stories with washing strung from window to window.
