After his graduation, Bernal began research under
William Henry Bragg at the Davy Faraday Laboratory at the
Royal Institution in London. In 1924 he determined the structure of
graphite (the Bernal stacking describes the registry of two graphite planes) and also did work on the crystal structure of
bronze. In 1927, he was appointed as the first lecturer in Structural Crystallography at
Cambridge, becoming the assistant director of the
Cavendish Laboratory in 1934. There, he started applying his crystallographic techniques to organic molecules, starting with
oestrin and sterol compounds including
cholesterol in 1929, forcing a radical change of thinking among sterol chemists. While at Cambridge, he analysed
vitamin B1 (1933),
pepsin (1934),
vitamin D2 (1935), the
sterols (1936) and the
tobacco mosaic virus (1937).
Max Perutz arrived as a student from
Vienna in 1936 and started the work on
haemoglobin that would occupy him most of his career. However, Bernal was refused fellowships at Emmanuel and Christ's and tenure by
Ernest Rutherford, who disliked him, and in 1937, Bernal became Professor of
Physics at
Birkbeck College, University of London, a department that had been brought to the first rank by
Patrick Blackett. The same year, he was elected as a
Fellow of the Royal Society.
Ministry of Home Security In the early 1930s, Bernal had been arguing for peace, but that changed after the
Spanish Civil War started. With the outbreak of
World War II in 1939, Bernal joined the
Ministry of Home Security, where he brought in
Solly Zuckerman to carry out the first proper analyses of the effects of enemy bombing and of explosions on animals and people. Their subsequent analysis of the effects of bombs on
Birmingham and
Kingston upon Hull showed that
city bombing produced little disruption and production was affected only by direct hits on factories. A supper for scientists organised by the
Tots and Quots in
Soho generated a multi-author book
Science in War produced in a month by
Allen Lane, one of the guests, arguing that science should be applied in every part of the war effort. From 1942, he and Zuckerman served as scientific advisers to
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of Combined Operations. This project indirectly marked his divergence from Zuckerman, when he was recalled from a joint tour of the
Middle East investigating the co-operation of army and air force, but the tour established Zuckerman's reputation as a military scientist.
Operation Overlord and D-Day After the disaster of the
Dieppe raid, Bernal was determined that its mistakes not be repeated in
Operation Overlord. He demonstrated the advantages of an artificial harbour to the participants of the
Quebec Conference in 1943, as the only British scientist present. On 3 June 1944, he was commissioned a temporary lieutenant (Special Branch) in the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). His main contribution to the
Normandy landings was the detailed mapping of the beaches, which had to be done without attracting any German attention. His knowledge of the area stemmed from research in English libraries, personal experience (he had visited
Arromanches on previous holidays) and aerial surveys. At Bernal's memorial service, Zuckerman downplayed Bernal's part in the Normandy landings and said that he was not cleared for the highest levels of security. Given Bernal's
Marxist and pro-Soviet sympathies, it is perhaps remarkable that there has never been any suggestion that he fed any information in that direction. However, Brown provides evidence of Bernal's contributions to the preparation and the success of the invasion. After assisting in the preparations for D-Day with work on the structure of the proposed landing sites and the
bocage countryside beyond, Bernal landed, according to
C. P. Snow, at
Normandy on the afternoon of D-Day+1 in the uniform of an Instructor-Lieutenant
Royal Navy to record the effectiveness of the plans. He also assisted boats floundering on the rocks by using his knowledge of the area but said, "I committed the frightful
solecism of not knowing which was
port and which side was
starboard".
Application of Marxism to science Raised as a
Catholic, Bernal became a
socialist in Cambridge as a result of a long night arguing with a friend. He also became an atheist. According to one reviewer, "This conversion, as complete as
St. Paul's on the
road to Damascus, goes some way to account for, but not excuse, Bernal's blind allegiance for the rest of his life, to the
Soviet Union". He joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1923. His membership evidently lapsed when he returned to Cambridge in 1927 and was not renewed until 1933, and he may have lost his card again shortly afterward. Consequently, when Bernal was invited to a world peace conference in New York in February 1949, his
visa was refused. However, he was allowed into the
French Fourth Republic in April for the World Congress of the Partisans of Peace, with
Frédéric Joliot-Curie as president and Bernal as vice-president. The following year the organisation changed its name to the
World Peace Council. On 20 September 1949, after his return from giving a speech strongly critical of the
Western Bloc at a peace conference in Moscow, the
Evening Star newspaper of
Ipswich published an interview with Bernal in which he endorsed
Soviet agriculture and the "proletarian science" of
Trofim Lysenko. In November 1949, the
British Association for the Advancement of Science removed Bernal from membership of its council. Membership in British radical science groups quickly declined. Unlike some of his socialist colleagues, Bernal persisted in defending the Soviet position on Lysenko. He publicly refused to accept the gaping fissures that the dispute revealed between the study of
natural science and
dialectical materialism. In November 1950,
Pablo Picasso, a fellow communist, en route to a Soviet-sponsored World Peace Congress in
Sheffield, created a mural in Bernal's flat at the top of No. 22 Torrington Square. In 2007, it became part of the
Wellcome Trust's collection for £250,000. Throughout the 1950s, Bernal maintained a faith in the Soviet Union as a vehicle for the creation of a socialist scientific utopia. In 1953, he was awarded the
Stalin Peace Prize. From 1959 to 1965, he was president of the
World Peace Council.
Awards and honours Bernal was awarded the
Royal Medal in 1945, the
Guthrie lecture in 1947, the
Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, Bernal was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1937. He was also said to be the inspiration for the character Tengal in
The Holiday by
Stevie Smith. The
Bernal Lecture and its successor the
Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture Medal and Lecture were named in his honour. ==Personal life==