John Desmond Bernal
| John Desmond Bernal | |
|---|---|
John Desmond Bernal
|
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| Born |
10 May 1901 Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland |
| Died | 15 September 1971 (aged 70) London, England |
| Resting place | Battersea Cemetery, Morden (unmarked) |
| Residence | England |
| Citizenship | British |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
| Fields | X-ray crystallography |
| Institutions | Birkbeck College, University of London |
| Alma mater | Emmanuel College, Cambridge |
| Doctoral advisor | Sir William Bragg |
| Doctoral students | Dorothy Hodgkin, Alan Mackay, Max Perutz |
| Known for | Science, politics and war work |
| Notable awards |
Royal Medal 1945, Guthrie lecture 1947, Stalin Peace Prize 1953, Grotius Gold Medal 1959, Bakerian Lecture 1962 Fellow of the Royal Society |
John Desmond Bernal FRS (/bərˈnɑːl/; 10 May 1901 – 15 September 1971) was a scientist and was a pioneer in X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He also published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal was a political supporter of Communism and wrote popular books on subjects connecting science and society.
His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/PortugueseSephardic Jewish origin on his father's side (his grandfather Jacob Genese, properly Ginesi, had adopted the family name Bernal of his paternal grandmother around 1837). His father Samuel Bernal had been raised as a Catholic in Limerick and after graduating from Albert Agricultural College spent 14 years in Australia before returning to Tipperary to buy a farm, Brookwatson, near Nenagh where Bernal was brought up. His American mother, née Elizabeth Miller, whose mother was from Antrim, was a graduate of Stanford University and a journalist and had converted to Catholicism.
Bernal was educated in England first, for one term, at Stonyhurst College which he hated. Because of this he was moved to Bedford School at the age of thirteen. There, according to Goldsmith, for five years from 1914 to 1919 he found it 'extremely unpleasant' and most of his fellow students 'bored him' though his younger brother Kevin who was also there was 'some consolation' and Brown claims "he seemed to adjust easily to life" there. In 1919, he went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge University with a scholarship.
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