Obsessed by a Dream The Physicist

Rolf Widerøe a Giant in the History of

Accelerators Aashild Sørheim
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Springer Biographies

Obsessed
by a Dream
The Physicist Rolf Widerøe –
a Giant in the History of Accelerators

AASHILD SØRHEIM
Springer Biographies
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 Aashild Sørheim

Obsessed by a Dream
The Physicist Rolf Widerøe – a Giant
in the History of Accelerators
Aashild Sørheim
Oslo, Norway

Translated by Frank Stewart, Bathgate, UK

ISSN 2365-0613 ISSN 2365-0621 (electronic)

Springer Biographies
ISBN 978-3-030-26337-9 ISBN 978-3-030-26338-6 (eBook)
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Translation from the Norwegian language edition: Besatt av en drøm. Historien om Rolf Widerøe by
Aashild Sørheim, © Forlaget Historie & Kultur AS, Oslo, Norway, 2015. All Rights Reserved. ISBN:
9788283230000

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To Professor Tor Brustad
who handed me the baton
- and then cheered me on
 Preface

I tell of a man of the world, tall and dark. Particular about his after-shave;
trousers carefully pressed; gallant; cheerful in dance and fluent in speech.
Knows where the martini glasses are stored, preferably in neat lines. Accurate
German grammar. Less accurate English, but enthusiastically expressive.
When he addresses a meeting his message is clear, whether it be about the
storage of atomic waste or the treatment of cancer.
He is working in the garden, wearing a Mao suit that he bought in China.
What will the neighbours think? As if he would bother about that. His wife
might, but not him. He has brought some plants from overseas, carefully
transported in test tubes in his hand baggage. Home now, he is planting the
cuttings carefully in his overgrown garden, which despite all his loving care
looks like a wilderness.
When he has a cold, he treats it by dipping a plug of cotton wool in red
wine and putting it in his nostril. Doses himself with dietary supplements
and just to be sure, thumps his chest seven or nine times. ‘Alternative med-
icine’ some ten years before it became fashionable, practised by a man who
has several honorary doctorates in medicine and is among the company of
the great physicists.
Even before he had completed his doctorate at the age of 25, electrical
engineering companies were lining up to headhunt him. Philips, AEG,
Siemens, Brown Boveri or ASEA—he has either worked there himself or has
good friends who are senior figures in one company or another. Ever since
his student days, he has been almost married to his job. But he reads a bed-
time story and says the evening prayer with his children every evening. On
Sundays he dons knee breeches, packs a thermos and a lunch pack and goes

vii
viii      Preface

walking with his family, carrying a framed Bergans rucksack, Norwegian

1950’s style. The proper gear, no nonsense, and speaking Norwegian. That is
when we are Norwegian! Or he takes the car and the old, worn picnic basket
with the plastic plates, the cutlery fastened inside the lid with leather straps
and a methylated spirit stove to heat the sausages. When the nephews visit
during the school holidays he generously takes them along too, even though
they think he is a miser. The meal service doesn’t exactly match their expecta-
tions of what a famous uncle overseas can offer, but he is a bit odd, exciting
to be with, a perfect uncle.
Formative experience on the ski trails in the Nordmarka forest north of
Oslo has grown into a love of the Alps. His three children, one after another,
have to be taught the European style of downhill ski-ing. But first they have
to climb up, preferably alongside the line of the ski-lift. Or he takes them to
a chateau in France on a visit to the director of Martell, who apparently is
one of his father’s business contacts. Or at Easter to a big family gathering at
a friend’s cabin in the Norwegian mountains. Or to a summer gathering at
the family’s country house by the Oslo Fjord. High and low. Hut and coun-
try house. Never dull. Variety in abundance.
He became a father again at the age of 70. He registered over 200 patents,
in various countries. He has medals and honours from all around. He has
a research prize named after him. Plays tennis. Ice bathes in his own pool.
Swims every morning. Lectures every week, at a prestigious technical school
in Zurich. Is brought in as a consultant on major international projects.
Manufactures equipment for treating cancer. That is to say, that’s what he
really does. Either he has deceived the Germans during the war, or they have
deceived him. Or perhaps they have deceived each other, or us. Who knows?
But he doesn’t talk about that.
Rolf Widerøe is no ordinary man. Just by being himself, he has a pres-
ence, an aura. All who know him become excited when they speak of him:
family members, colleagues, others. A mixture of the socially awkward,
almost psychopathic, always-far-away-in-his-own-thoughts nerd and the
sensitive, warm, playful person, reliable and responsible. Some say he is
single-minded and thinks only about his research. But he is sociable, eccen-
tric, excitable, naïve. We could always turn to him when we had a problem.
He was close. He was distant. He saw us. He didn’t see us.
It all hangs together, but doesn’t fully make sense. Not all at once. Or
maybe it does. He was so many. You name it. It depends on having eyes to
see it. You need to have an eye for nuances, see things from several perspec-
tives, and not try to see everything all at once.
 Preface     ix

I would like you to meet this person, and I am almost certain you have
not heard of him before. But I am almost as certain that having met him,
you will wonder why he isn’t better known.
But first let me tell you a story of three people.

The Zarephath Widow’s Cruse

Once upon a time there were three men from different countries who hap-
pened to meet one and the same person, each in his own time and place.
None of them knew each other. The only things they had in common were
that they had once studied physics and that they had met a man who made
a strong impression on them. The first wrote a book about him. The second
tried to restore his reputation. The third tried to understand him. The man
they had met was Rolf Widerøe.
For the first of them, the story began with a gang of boys in Argentina
hearing wild rumours about one of Hitler’s miracle weapons. The story con-
tinued in Italy and Germany, and ended at Widerøe’s home in Switzerland
when Widerøe was 90 years old.
The second man’s journey was much less exotic—from a reading room
at Oslo University, via research laboratories at the Radium Hospital to the
Norwegian National Archives in Oslo. With laborious steps, within a radius
of just a few kilometres, a quiet drama was building up throughout the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century, culminating in material form as a bronze
statuette called ‘The Widow in Zarephath’.
The third man, the youngest, is still in America, wondering about some-
thing he heard one May day behind the 400 year old walls of Rosendal
Manor amid the fruit blossoms of Hardanger. It has little or nothing to do
with what he himself is known for, but it is relevant to current ethical debate
about how far a researcher can go in pursuit of his goal.
Each of these three will tell us about his Rolf Widerøe. They all have
doctorates, but we are not talking science here. They point out, from their
own perspectives, their views of a man entangled in rumours and mystery,
famous abroad but cruelly and deliberately hidden and forgotten in his own
land. Their narratives combine in the story of the German, the Norwegian
and the Dane who find themselves ‘In a hotel in North Italy’, ‘In a shielded
bunker in the Radium Hospital’ and ‘In a grand seventeenth century house’.
x      Preface

The German
Pedro Waloschek needs to write a book about him.
In a hotel in North Italy where they are attending a conference, two col-
leagues are sitting in the bar one evening. They are both physicists, in their
thirties and of Jewish origin. They both grew up in Austria. One is called
Pedro and one called Bruno. They have had unsettled lives, but they both
now live in Italy and they try to meet at conferences. There in the hotel by
Lake Como, they spent a long evening as Bruno spoke about an amazing
boss he had once had, who sorted out all sorts of things for him, even in his
private life. Pedro told me later that his friend Bruno seemed a little eccen-
tric, but the two of them had similar backgrounds and spoke the same dia-
lect. Even their surnames were rather similar, Waloschek and Touschek, and
they enjoyed talking together.
That August evening, Bruno spoke about his life during the war. Because
his mother was a Jew, he was expelled from high school, where however by
a little manipulation of the system he had managed to sit the exam. Then
he was excluded from the university in his home town of Vienna. He tried
to study in Rome and planned to continue in Manchester, but ended up
instead in Berlin to study mathematics and physics, aged 19. There he
worked secretly for the Luftwaffe, tasked with doing calculations on a pro-
ject involving radiation, with none other than Rolf Widerøe as his boss.
Pedro continues the story:

My friend Bruno told me that he had been assistant to an unusually talented

electrical engineer from Norway, from whom he had learned a lot. Not only
that; this boss had visited him when he was in prison in Hamburg after he had
been caught in the act of reading foreign magazines in a library and arrested
by the Gestapo. The Norwegian had visited him, bringing cigarettes, schnapps
and his physics notes.

At the conference in Varenna, Bruno told many stories about the

Norwegian. He admitted that for a while he had thought Widerøe was fol-
lowing a false trail. He seemed obsessed by what he thought was a brilliant
idea to build an accelerator that was more effective than any that had been
built before. Widerøe hadn’t given up on the idea. He was sure it was revolu-
tionary—and he had been right.
Pedro came away with an impression of a remarkable Norwegian who was
determined, thoughtful, clever and persevering. A man to be taken seriously.
 Preface     xi

Pedro had no idea at that time that he himself would meet Widerøe almost
by accident 30 years later. However, the coincidences were wider than
that, as in fact he had come across him indirectly several times long before.
Unknown to him, there had been links as early as his schooldays. The first
was when he went to school in Argentina, aged 14. During the war his
father, a Jewish architect, had had the right to run his business in Vienna
removed and the family had fled to Buenos Aires. One of Pedro’s classmates
was a German who told him for the first time about ‘death rays’. Scientists
in Hitler’s Germany were apparently building the super-weapon that would
make the Allies’ planes fall like flies. His classmate had expanded the effect
of the wonder-weapon and vigorously maintained that even New York could
be bombed in this way. When Pedro came home, however, he learned that
rumours of such a wonder-weapon arose from time to time and disappeared
just as quickly.
People are still captivated by the dream of magic rays that can be used as
a weapon in space and that lie in the interspace between science fiction and
reality, between computer games where the enemy is exterminated by a laser
pistol and Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars. But what the boy had said was true.
The Germans really did have a death ray project—and it appeared that Rolf
Widerøe was involved in it.
When Pedro began his studies, he came across the fascination with rays
again. He met a lecturer who was almost obsessed with betatrons and how
they were made. So had this lecturer met the machine’s inventor? No, far
from it, but one of his professors had. The fascination had been contagious,
though Pedro didn’t understand—at that time—why the lecturer had to
promote the science of betatrons to others. As a student in the 1950’s, Pedro
obviously had no idea who was behind this type of machine. He just won-
dered why they were required to learn about something so obscure as analys-
ing ‘the stability of electrons in a particular type of accelerator, known as a
betatron’.

I was interested in a lot of things, but not particularly in electrons blowing

around and allowing themselves to be accelerated in such a gadget.

Forty years later, however, Pedro wrote a book about Rolf Widerøe, the
man who had invented the betatron. By then, Pedro had long since com-
pleted his doctorate and was now the information manager of a nuclear
research laboratory in Hamburg which the Norwegian had in his day been
involved in planning. Pedro was about to retire, and from his background
xii      Preface

in the organisation he had long been aware that here was a story waiting to
be written. He sought out Widerøe, who was then almost 90 and was living
in Switzerland. The pair of them worked on the project for two years, and
the book was published in Germany in 1993. It consists of Widerøe’s own
memoirs and records of the conversations between the two of them, read
and approved by Widerøe himself. It is written mostly in the first person
and is considered as Widerøe’s authorised autobiography. It was later trans-
lated into several languages, but never into Norwegian.
Waloschek had for many years been a correspondent for the monthly
journal CERN Courier, published by the world’s biggest accelerator labora-
tory in Geneva. The editor of the journal wanted to commission a review
of the book about the Norwegian who had been a consultant when the
laboratory was set up. Nothing came of his request. The editor wanted
a Scandinavian to do the job but found nobody to take it on, whether in
Norway, Sweden or Denmark. So the biography of one of CERN’s pioneers
did not get a mention in the centre’s own monthly journal. Pedro said that
nobody up there in the North was interested in Rolf Widerøe.
But one person was interested: a retired professor in Oslo.

The Norwegian
Tor Brustad wants to restore his reputation.
In a shielded bunker in the Radium Hospital, a new machine was being
installed in the 1950s. A machine to treat cancer, the newest and most
advanced in the World, was being fine-tuned. An enormous black colossus
of 2 by 2 by 2 metres, well mounted in a shielded bunker, a monster not in
the least like today’s hi-tech medical equipment but able to produce incred-
ibly strong radiation, 31 million electron volts. A machine specially devel-
oped; such equipment is not bought ‘off the shelf ’. International research
had concluded that high-energy radiation was about to revolutionise the
treatment of cancer, and Norway’s investment was leading the way. Only
one such machine had been built before in Europe. A representative from
the suppliers, the Swiss company Brown Boveri, is in Oslo to take care of the
adjustments.
One day a newly appointed research assistant, Tor Brustad, comes into
the bunker, curious about the marvel that they had been busy installing and
testing for over a year. He sees a man upside-down in the machine with an
adjustable spanner in one hand and a soldering iron in the other.
 Preface     xiii

I immediately noticed this man in a hospital laboratory coat which had

once been white. I assumed that he was a service engineer. Tall and thin. He
spoke constantly and enthusiastically; spoke Norwegian in fact. He really was
Norwegian. He obviously knew what he was talking about, and enjoyed talk-
ing about it. I was young and eager to learn, and he answered all my questions
thoroughly. This man knew the machine inside out. The factory in Baden had
sent the head of their development department himself, a Dr. Rolf Widerøe, to
sort out a fault that had cropped up. After a while I realised that this was the
man who had built the whole machine.

Now, over sixty years later, that is what Prof. Brustad tells me about his
first meeting with Rolf Widerøe. At that time, the Radium Hospital was in
the process of setting up a treatment centre that combined medicine and
technology. Obvious today, but revolutionary then. Brustad was one of the
experts from the University of Oslo brought in to take part in the devel-
opment. He later became head of the hospital’s medical physics depart-
ment and head of technology and research at the cancer research institute’s
biophysics department. He started and took part in a specialised medi-
cal-technical course at what was then the Norwegian Technical College in
Trondheim. He continues:

At Oslo University I had obviously learned about accelerators and also heard
about the new type, called the betatron, which an American was said to be
developing. Widerøe, on the other hand, was unknown to me. I had never
heard of him during my training, even though I was specialising in nuclear
physics.

He realised eventually that the Norwegian Rolf Widerøe from Brown Boveri
had been the first person in the world to try to build such a machine.
Indeed, it was he who had pioneered the idea of the betatron, which would
create many new possibilities by propelling particles on a round course
instead of along a straight line. The purpose of an accelerator is to accelerate
charged particles to high energy. Widerøe’s boyhood dream had been to find
an ingenious way to do this. At an early stage, he had the idea that it should
be possible to accelerate charged particles in a glass tube shaped like an enor-
mous doughnut. The particles would go round the circuit faster and faster,
increasing their energy with each turn.
Widerøe did not manage at first to put his idea into practice. An
American, Donald Kerst, built on Widerøe’s method and achieved this 13
years later. Now Widerøe had gone on to build a machine himself, with
higher energy and greater therapeutic potential than the American model.
xiv      Preface

After going round the circuit a million times, the particles would achieve
a very high speed. For this to happen, there needs to be no hindrance block-
ing their way; there would need to be a vacuum. A changing magnetic field
would impart energy to the particles and a magnetic steering field would
hold them in position round the course. When the particles had built up
high enough energy, they would be brought out through two small openings
in the ‘doughnut’. The high energy particles could have numerous applica-
tions: in hospitals, to treat cancer; in industry, to show and test the internal
structure of materials; and in research, to advance understanding of nuclear
physics.
The Radium Hospital had now acquired such a state of the art apparatus.
At that time radiotherapy had been shown to be effective in treating cancer.
Deep-seated tumours were still a problem, however, because the necessary
high doses of radiation would damage the healthy tissues they had to pass
through on their way to the tumour. Physicists thought that the solution to
this problem was to create X-rays with much higher energy than had been
possible before. But that needed new technology. The answer came in the
form of what were called accelerators, and the founding father of acceler-
ator technology was Rolf Widerøe. He had built the world’s first accelera-
tor, a linear accelerator that had been the topic of his doctorate in 1927,
and he went on to develop betatrons that were successful both medically and
commercially. Later, he was honoured with numerous prizes and his work
came to be included in advanced physics courses the world over. But when
young Brustad met him in the Radium Hospital with the spanner and the
soldering iron in his hands, not many of those present associated him with
ground-breaking science. He was just Brown Boveri’s betatron man. The
focus of attention was on the epoch-making equipment rather than on the
underlying research and how it had come to fruition. Far less on who had
first had the idea.
Several decades later the former research assistant finally had time to look
further into something he had been wondering about for so long. There was
something about Rolf Widerøe, and Prof. Emeritus Tor Brustad wanted to
get to the bottom of it. No-one wanted to know about him. Brustad knew
that Widerøe had been imprisoned in 1945 and that there had been wild
rumours about what he had been up to during the war. He was said to
have been almost personally responsible for the bombing of London. But
what had he really been doing, and for what had he been condemned? If
indeed he had been condemned. What was rumour and what was reality?
It appeared that nobody had wanted—or perhaps dared—to approach the
 Preface     xv

subject. Sometimes it even seemed as if somebody didn’t want the questions

answered, as if the whole problem was too uncomfortable. Why was there an
undertone of something ‘dangerous’ about Widerøe?
Brustad soon discovered that the physicists at Oslo University at that time
had not considered Widerøe to be particularly talented. However, when
Europe was trying to build its technological capacity up again after World
War ll and establish a research environment on a level with the USA, the
leading international physicists had unhesitatingly turned to Widerøe. A syn-
chrocyclotron and a proton synchrotron in the shape of a huge doughnut
were to be built outside Geneva, on the Swiss-French border. The collabora-
tive endeavour initiated by the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire is
generally known as ‘CERN’. Today, 17,000 people from over 100 countries
work there on projects directed towards an understanding of the universe. It
is hoped that a giant accelerator will one day help us to understand what the
universe is made of and why the fundamental particles behave as they do.
The fact that Widerøe was a consultant on this project from the start was
largely ignored in Norway. At the same time, he had a directorship with
Brown Boveri at their head office in Switzerland. The company, which today
is part of the ABB Group, had apparently made great efforts to recruit him
and had given him considerable freedom. He was regularly on the move
around the USA, The Soviet Union, China and Australia to give lectures
and install betatrons. The same year the treatment apparatus was starting to
be installed in Oslo, he was also working in Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen,
Milan, Geneva, Berlin and other cities in Germany. Why then was he so
unknown among physicists in Norway? It was one thing for the general pub-
lic not to have heard of him, but fellow physicists? It didn’t seem to make
sense.
Brustad was a realist and a scientist, He had to make sense of this mystery,
strip away the rumours and insinuations, put the facts on the table. So with
permission from the Widerøe family he went to the Norwegian National
Archives and sought out the documents from the prosecutions in 1945–46.
What did he find? Exactly what he had anticipated. Widerøe should not
have been imprisoned. Documents that had been locked away for fifty years
showed that there had been no grounds to arrest him, far less imprison him.
He had not done important military work for Germany during the war. He
had never been formally accused of that.
In May 1997 Brustad presented his sensational findings at The First
Scandinavian Symposium on Radiation Oncology. In front of repre-
sentatives from the Norwegian authorities and the international research
xvi      Preface

community he claimed that the time was long ripe to give Widerøe his
deserved place as the pioneer of accelerator technology. Widerøe was not
a traitor. It was Norway that had betrayed him. The following year, Tor
Brustad summarised his source material in an article in the scientific jour-
nal Acta Oncologica. He asked rhetorically why the inventor of the particle
accelerator had been overlooked in his homeland, and criticised the aca-
demic community for having reduced Widerøe to ‘a footnote in the history
of physics in Norway’.
Yes, Widerøe had indeed worked in Germany during the war, from 1943
to 1945. Yes, he had done top-secret research. Yes, he had worked on a pro-
ject under the control of the Luftwaffe, who had sent German officers to
Oslo to recruit him. But his research had nothing to do with the steering
system of Hitler’s V2 bombs, as had been alleged. During the war years in
Germany he had developed a machine for treating cancer, a betatron of
15 megaelectronvolts (MeV), the forerunner of the 31 MeV one he later
installed in the Radium Hospital.
Yes, there was a big ‘but’. Why on Earth had Widerøe worked in
Germany in the pay of the Nazi authorities? Other people than Tor
Brustad had wondered about that. The court documents Brustad found in
the National Archive had something important to say about that, namely
that Widerøe should not have been arrested. But the documents didn’t
say everything. They clarified the formal account, but said little about the
human story. The thin, typewritten A4 sheet entitled ‘Treason Case 3418’
said nothing about Widerøe’s motive, and nothing about which side the
man was on.
People had formed their own conclusions, but now there was someone
who was trying to think a little differently.

The Dane
Søren Bentzen tries to understand him.
In a grand seventeenth century house, Rosendal Manor by the Hardanger
Fjord, the Dane, Søren Bentzen, is among the gathering of cancer and radi-
otherapy experts attending a conference in spring 1997 in connection with
the centenary the previous year of Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of what
later came to be called ‘Röntgen rays’ or ‘X rays’. One of the contributions
makes a particular impression on Bentzen. It is not what you would expect
in a room full of cancer researchers. It has no formal technical language and
not a single Latin expression. It is about Rolf Widerøe, who had died the
 Preface     xvii

year before and to whom the speaker thought great injustice had been done,
especially by his own people. The speaker—Tor Brustad from the Radium
Hospital—delivered a strong personal appeal to give Widerøe the honour
and respect he deserved for his scientific achievements and to do him justice
by restoring his public reputation, now that the finds in the archives had
cleared him of the accusations of having developed German weaponry.
‘That’s all very well,’ thought Bentzen, ‘but what about the ethical issues
Widerøe must have faced?’ Bentzen recognised in these the same issues as
he himself had faced in his research. This was the aspect of Widerøe’s story
that gripped Bentzen. What is right and what is wrong when you choose
whether to research a topic or to listen to conflicting advice round about
you? Bentzen had studied both physics and medicine and was world-
renowned in the field of medical ethics. He eventually became a professor at
the University of Maryland School of Medicine, USA. He has held numer-
ous appointments in medical physics and published many academic papers.
After the seminar in Hardanger, Widerøe’s fate continued to fascinate
Bentzen. The more he thought about this man, whom he didn’t really know
very much about, the more fascinated he became. He must have had an
interesting life, with his important positions, many friends, healthy leisure
pursuits and countless business visits to many parts of the world. Altogether
this appeared quite normal, but Bentzen saw that Rolf Widerøe had faced
a stark choice, whether or not to go to Germany in 1943. That must have
been an almost existential problem for Widerøe in 1943, when his coun-
try was occupied by the Germans and people saw the situation as black and
white. Are you for us or against us? Widerøe faced a fateful decision, and its
consequences affected the whole of the rest of his long life.
Researchers are coming up against more and more moral and ethical
questions. Should we carry out research on fertilised eggs? A pig’s heart in
a human being, is that going too far? What about cloning a sheep? A cow?
A human? Bacteria that feed on oil, so that we can win more oil from the
North Sea? Great! But what if they damage the marine environment? Should
we permit a trial, or should we do more research first? Or stop the research?
Should we allow good to be done even when it can lead to something bad?
Is the best the enemy of the good? Such are the eternal dilemmas that a
researcher faces. As an expert in ethics, Bentzen knew a lot about this.
Almost ten years later, in September 2006, Bentzen came across Widerøe’s
story again. This too was at a medical conference in Norway, and this
time he was one of the speakers. This time too, what absorbed his atten-
tion most was not recent therapeutic advances. He was to be awarded the
Widerøe Prize and had to give a speech of thanks. The prize takes the form
xviii      Preface

of a bronze statuette named Enken i Sarepta, a reference to the story of the

prophet Elijah and the Zarephath widow’s cruse, and crafted by sculptor
Nina Sundbye. The National Radium Hospital in Oslo was celebrating the
opening of its new radiotherapy building with a two day conference called
The Rolf Widerøe Symposium—Advances in Radiation Oncology. Clinicians
and scientists from USA, Germany, Sweden, Ireland and Norway would
be speaking. Among those present were officials from the Department of
Health, the President of the European Radiotherapy Organisation and other
important people who are included on such occasions. The wording of the
invitation indicated that something had changed:

To recognise the importance of research for the development of radiotherapy,

the programme will include the award of the Widerøe Prize. This is awarded
to a scientist who has made a major contribution to the development of
cancer radiotherapy. It is awarded in memory of the Norwegian physicist Rolf
Widerøe, who created the foundations for the development of modern radio-
therapy and radiotherapy machines.

The invitation was signed by the head of the clinic and the head of research.
The statement could not have been more clear. Widerøe had been officially
and formally recognised, once and for all. The oncology establishment had
quietly and calmly given Widerøe his place in the official history of radio-
therapy. Tor Brustad’s rehabilitation project was taking effect.
In his speech of thanks for the prize, Søren Bentzen tells the international
gathering that ‘There is a direct line from Widerøe’s creative genius to the
high-tech cancer therapy machines we see here today’. And so he contin-
ued his speech, talking not about technological details but about Widerøe’s
life history, which he had been interested in ever since the conference at
Rosendal Manor.
Bentzen continued from where Prof. Brustad’s documentation had left
off. He tried to think himself into Widerøe’s situation and imagine what had
led him to his fateful decision to go to Germany during the war. He had
come to this conclusion: ‘Widerøe was not a victim of his political convic-
tions’, he said with the emphasis on ‘not’. He was quite simply a human
being, a scientist who became a victim of his professional commitment. That
is what fascinates me, and perhaps that is what we can learn today from his
story’.
Bentzen may have been talking not just about Widerøe’s choice and his
day to day life. He may have been talking about all researchers who face
the ethical problems that modern research has put into the order of the day
 Preface     xix

and that can’t be answered by looking them up in a book. He may also have
been addressing politicians who have to deal with such impossible questions
because they are required to take a position on them. Most of all, perhaps,
he may have been talking to himself as a member of international research
ethics committees expected to give advice on questions which people have
barely been able to formulate fully and to which nobody has yet drafted
answers.
It’s about the conflict between pursuing one’s research objective and at
the same time considering what is right. Researchers have a lot of power.
When should they use it and when should they not use it? Is it the research-
er’s responsibility to say ‘Yes, that’s fine’ or ‘Stop, I won’t take part in this?’
Or should others do this?
‘The researchers have the responsibility. Most people are not qualified to
understand the issues’.
‘Of course not,’ comes the reply, ‘people have to use their common sense’.
‘Really?’
The more voices join the clamour, the more difficult it becomes for public
and politicians when they either cannot form an opinion or are divided in
their views.
The hard, practical choice that Widerøe faced in 1943—whether to work
in Germany or not—is beyond the experience of those of us who were born
after World War ll. Nowadays we all think more globally, but at the same
time more individually.
For today’s ‘Generation Me’ who are raised across borders and want to
make their own way in life, the problem is almost incomprehensible. There
are so many wars. You can’t stop living because of that. ‘I have my own life
to think about’. Many people also thought thus prior to 1940. But war
affects a population, new norms arise, new things appear self-evident. War is
war.
The fact that the world has changed doesn’t exactly make it easier to put
oneself into Widerøe’s situation.
‘Which glasses shall we use to look at it? Old or new?’
‘Old, because that was when he lived’.
‘But if those who think Widerøe was ahead of his time are right, what
then?’
‘Then you can use today’s glasses’, another voice says alluringly.
‘Forget the glasses’, calls another. ‘Try to stand in his shoes’.
‘Is that possible? To see things from somebody else’s position?’
‘Well, apparently not, but perhaps we should try’.
Bentzen had a lot to think about after the meeting at Rosendal Manor.
xx      Preface

Not Finished Yet

So, German Pedro Waloschek published a biography of Widerøe in
Germany. Norwegian Tor Brustad went to the National Archives in Oslo,
found documentary evidence that Widerøe should not have been arrested,
and published his findings both orally and in print. Then Dane Søren
Bentzen was awarded a prize for building upon Rolf ’s pioneering work in
radiation oncology. All three have continued to think about Widerøe.
Brustad was inspired by Widerøe. Bentzen was inspired by Brustad. From
before, we know that Widerøe inspired Bruno Touschek, who inspired Pedro
Waloschek, who also influenced Brustad. The main character, Widerøe, had
also inspired Bentzen directly, as he had once inspired Lawrence and Kerst.
He himself had been inspired by Einstein, Rutherford and a whole list of
great scientists. To inspire and to be inspired—all according to talent and
opportunity and the time one has been allocated on Earth. There is always
enough for everybody to marvel over.
There is also more than enough for the three secondary characters in
our story, the three men who each in his time had come across the remark-
able main character. In a hotel in North Italy; in a bunker in the Radium
Hospital; in a seventeenth century manor house. On different errands; in dif-
ferent places; at different times. Waloschek, Brustad and Bentzen. A German,
a Norwegian and a Dane who couldn’t forget him. The first succeeded in
writing his book, the second cleared his reputation and the third thought he
had found some sort of explanation for his choice during the war. But none
of them was finished with him. They had not emptied the widow’s cruse.

***

For there was more to be discovered, that nobody knew about. There were
archives yet to be explored, conversations that had not yet taken place. Was
it right of Pedro Waloschek to get caught up in Hitler’s radiation weapon?
Didn’t Tor Brustad try to understand Widerøe by portraying him as a
humanist and a man trying to do good? Did Søren Bentzen make him unde-
servedly a passive sacrifice for his scientific ardour? And what about people
who are still unheard, stones that are still unturned? Do we know everything
about his role during the war?
This book could have been an anthology of accounts from people who
had met him or had told about him—the German, the Norwegian, the
Dane and all the others. It started out as that, a pious wish by the author
 Preface     xxi

to assemble and edit copious and widely varied material into some sort of a
unified whole. To find the sum, and perhaps even the truth, in all that had
been written and said. Bring it out and up into the light, so that the man
could get the place he deserved. Not to make him either greater or less than
he was.
But then it appeared that there was more material to draw on. So much
that had not been said or written about this man who lived for almost a
century. Born 1902. Died 1996. Known throughout the world, except in
Norway.
Have you only heard of one Widerøe?
The one with the airline?
Yes, that’s right. That’s his brother, Viggo, a pioneer of flight.
But Rolf flew at least as high in his own sphere, physics. And he had a
mysterious past, of which his brother was a part.

Oslo, Norway Aashild Sørheim

 Acknowledgements

Rolf Widerøe’s life spanned most of the twentieth century, from 1902 to
1996. Many of the people who knew him and assisted with the research for
this book had retired or died when the Norwegian original was published in
2015, and others have retired or died since. I have been able to thank them
all personally as the work progressed, but I now express my thanks again
both to the living and to the departed, without distinction.
I wish first to thank the members of the Widerøe family, who have all
been supportive and helpful from the very start, who have released source
material and who have continued to answer my questions over many years.
I am also grateful to Prof. Tor Brustad at the Norwegian Radium Hospital
who drew my attention to Rolf Widerøe and who throughout the process
of researching and writing the book was conversation partner and physics
teacher, and who made all the material from his work in the Norwegian
National Archives available to me. Professor Pedro Waloschek in Hamburg,
the physicist who wrote both a book about Widerøe and a book about accel-
erators, taught me so much and finally gave me his whole archive, but sadly
died before my book was ready.
Thanks are also due to Finn Aaserud, Director of the Niels Bohr Archive
in Copenhagen, and Jan Sigurd Vaagen, Director of Academia Europea and
Professor at the University of Bergen—two physicists with an interest in the
history of science, who in their younger days took the initiative to arrange
for a tape-recorded interview with Widerøe, and who both encouraged and
assisted me in bringing their material to a wider audience.

xxiii
xxiv      Acknowledgements

The helpful and inspiring people who have also assisted include:
Peter Day, Research-Journalist and expert at The National Archives in
London;
Dr. Paul Forman at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.;
Professor Søren M. Bentzen, now at the University of Maryland School of
Medicine;
Professor Egil Lillestøl of CERN and the University of Bergen;
Norbert Lang, former Chief Archivist at BBC/ABB Switzerland;
Christian Gerber and Karsten Drangeid, who also were staff members at
BBC/ABB;
Finn Lied, formerly Norwegian Industry Minister and Director of the
Norwegian Defence Research Establishment;
Gunnar ‘Kjakan’ Sønsteby, who was a leading member of the Resistance;
Haakon Sandvold, formerly General Manager of ÅSV/Hydro;
Olav Aspelund, holder of a Norwegian State Bursary;
Professoressa Giulia Pancheri at the Frascati Laboratory in Italy;
Arnold Kramish, American physicist and author;
Knut Bjerkan, a colleague who has patiently supported me with research and
advice.

The scientists working at CERN, especially Dr. Ing. Heiko Damerau, Dr.
James Gillies and Dr. David Dallman have made a major contribution to
the preparation of this English edition, checking the translated text very
thoroughly for accuracy in scientific description and technical terminology.
For me, as someone who is not a physicist, it has been very reassuring to
be able to consult leading experts, whose input has definitely enhanced the
work.
In translating the book from Norwegian to English, Frank Stewart has
worked closely both with the expert physicists and with myself. I am par-
ticularly grateful for his commitment to the topic and his emphasis on try-
ing to combine factually accurate translation with sensitive preservation of
the personal, informal tone of my original text.
The English edition came into being in an unorthodox way, in a tripar-
tite collaboration between Springer Publishing House, myself as author, and
CERN as a major supporter. It was all made possible by Prof. Dr. Norbert
Holtkamp, Deputy Director of the US National Accelerator Laboratory in
Stanford, who took the initiative in engaging accelerator scientists and agen-
cies throughout the world to fund the translation.
 Acknowledgements     xxv

It all started with an invitation to Professor Holtkamp to speak at a sym-

posium organized at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in
Aachen in honour of Rolf Widerøe, who completed his PhD there in 1927.
Professor Holtkamp appealed that ‘it was time to make the book available to
the accelerator community as a whole’. He declared that ‘It is our heritage
and the beginning of what we call today “Accelerator Science”’.
His initiative was supported enthusiastically by Dr. Ralph Assmann
(DESY), Prof. Dr. Andreas Lehrach (Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH)
and Prof. Dr. Achim Stahl (RWTH) who had invited him to speak about
Rolf Widerøe at the symposium ‘90 years of RF accelerators’ in Aachen,
Germany.
I am very grateful to Prof. Holtkamp for getting in touch with me and
for stepping indefatigably into the breach to obtain international support for
my aim in writing the book, namely to give Rolf Widerøe his deserved place
in history.
CERN’s invaluable role in the project has been promoted by Director
General Fabiola Gianotti's positive attitude and implemented by the ded-
icated physicists and others I have become acquainted with during the
process, who have all shared my eagerness to give Rolf Widerøe’s story the
attention and justice it deserves.
Jens Vigen, CERN Scientific Information Service, deserves special men-
tion. He has represented CERN in the practical details of administering the
sponsorship and has applied his long experience in communicating science
to the wider public and his familiarity with both traditional and open access
publishing to find solutions to practical problems and engage Springer as
publisher.
Publishing this book as an open-access monograph ensures that students
across the world, including those based in less favoured countries, will have
the opportunity to learn about Rolf Widerøe’s contributions to accelerator
physics.
I am also grateful to Dr. Christian Caron, Executive Publishing Editor
Physics Springer, who has been enthusiastically supportive from the start
and has found practical ways to make this publication possible.
…. and to Angela Lahee, Executive Editor Physics Springer, who took
over the project that Christian had started and steered it through its later
phases in her capacity as In-house Publishing Editor of the series Springer
Biographies.
The translation has been made possible by economic support from some
of the leading accelerator centres in the world. My heartfelt thanks go to:
xxvi      Acknowledgements

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland

European Spallation Source (ESS), Lund, Sweden
Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
German Electron Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg, Germany
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), Darmstadt, Germany
Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy, HZB, Berlin, Germany
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany
Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, California,
United States

Special acknowledgement is due to my mother, Maalfrid Sørheim, who from

her experience in intelligence services during the Second World War has
instilled in me that we should be cautious about judging people. Also to my
husband, Per Louis Jordal, who has ‘sponsored’ the project. Per has been an
adviser and enthusiastic supporter, and it was he who started the whole pro-
ject when he worked with Norwegian Broadcasting, by arranging for me to
make the acquaintance of Prof. Tor Brustad at a meeting there.
I have a great debt of gratitude to all these people, but I take responsibil-
ity for whatever finally comes to print.

Oslo, Norway Aashild Sørheim

2019
 Contents

1 A Comfortable Home 1
At the Same Time, Somewhere Else 3
A Family of Entrepreneurs 3
The Eldest Son Would Study 5
Ham and Aquavit 5
Spent 30 Øre on Steel Wire 7
King Oscar ll Comes to Visit 9
The Wealthy Family from Romsdal 10
Hiding Grandpa in the Oven 11
King Solomon’s Mines 14
Into the Atomic Age 15
Electrical Engineering 16
Student Social Life 18
An Idea on the Side … 19
… Set Aside for Now 21
‘It Won’t Work!’ 23
It Still Won’t Work! 25
Needs Must 26
Headhunted 28
Keeping an Eye on the Competition 30
Aeronautics and Airshows 31
The World’s Best Relays 33
Onwards and Upwards 35
The Brothers Take Off 36
Dance of Love 38

xxvii
xxviii      Contents

The Fishermen Set Their Clocks by Us 39

Grasp the Opportunities 40
Headhunted Two 41
The USA Takes up the Thread 43
Big Science 45
A Sponsorship Campaign 46
Headhunted Three 47
Doctor of Engineering 49
I Was Right! 50
Hot on the Trail 52
Following the Trail 54
Surely not … ? 54

2 The World Awaits 59

Sound, Stench and Knitted Mitts 60
The Secret Room in the Attic 61
BBC Becomes ABB 62
A New Ford and a Free Hand 63
Bergen V. Oslo 66
The Radium Hospital Changes Direction 68
In Rolf ’s Own Words 70
French Chateaux and Norwegian Summers 75
Plus-Fours and Dreams 77
Dancing Feet 78
The Asklepitron 81
None Better? 82
After the Betatron Came the Synchrotron 84
Something in the Air 86
Courageous Italians 87
Maybe the Answer Is in the Wastepaper Basket 89
Radiotherapy Machines Worldwide 91
Not a Teacher 93
The Last Emperor 94
Celebrities 96
100 Betatrons and 200 Patents 97
More Irons in the Fire 100
Because I Wanted to 102
American Enthusiasm 104
This Is How We’ll Do It 106
America Strikes Back 108
 Contents     xxix

A Workhorse 109
The Rest of the Alphabet 110
Meeting with the Great and Famous 111
The Big Questions 113
Doris and Petra 115
Twenty Years Teaching 117
The Art of Compromise 119
Between a Rock and a Hard Place 121
My Uncle Wasn’t Boring 122
A Surprising Uncle 124
A Brother-in Law Who Is Both Social and Antisocial 125
Curiosity Takes New Directions 128
Two Pretty Dresses 130
Doctor Honoris Causa 131
Come and Sit Down, My Boy 134
New Triumphs 141
More Prizes and Honours 146
Nevertheless 148
Around the World 149
Lacking Only the Nobel Prize 150
Just in Time 153
The Same Enthusiasm 154
The Patent He Didn’t Talk About 156
The First Love 157
The Impossible 158

3 The Dark Chapter 167

The Visitation at Work 168
Why Rolf? 170
A Few Days Later 171
The Industry Speeds up 172
Contacts 173
German Contacts 174
And His Answer Is … 176
What About the Family? 178
Into the Labyrinth 179
His Own Boss 180
A Strong Team 181
Fringe Benefits 183
Everyday Life at the Factory 184
xxx      Contents

The Writing in the Sky 184

Working from Home 187
A Tug-of-War Over the Contract 188
Three Phases 189
Death Rays 190
How It Began 191
Schiebold on the Carpet 193
Interrupted by the Air-Raid Sirens 195
Another Setback for the Death-Ray Project 196
More Betatrons 197
Time up! 198
Heads Roll 201
A Visit to Viggo 202
Industry on the Offensive 203
Hollnack Recruits a Courier 205
Siemens Joins the Race 206
War on All Fronts 208
Medical Use 210
The Betatron Must Be Moved to Safety 211
Driven by Events 213
The Unveiling 214
Quite Different Problems 215
The World Goes on 217
No Passport and Little Money 218

4 Treason Case Number 3418 223

Reported 225
Arrested 225
Remanded in Custody 226
A Defence Lawyer 227
Charged 228
Interviewed 229
Released 230
An Expert Committee Is Set up 231
The Committee’s Report 232
The Committee’s Conclusion 238
More Interviews 239
The Main Charge Is Dropped 243
No Prosecution 244
Forelegg Agreed 245
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Westlicher Teil
Östlicher Teil
 Zu Lettow-Vorbeck, Ostafrika
Marsch des Hauptteils der Schutztruppe
vom April 1916 bis November 1918 (Waffenstillstand)
Nördlicher Teil
Südlicher Teil
 Tirpitz
Erinnerungen
Ein stattlicher Band von 526 Seiten mit Bild des
Verfassers
Preis geh. M. 20.—, in vornehmem Einband,
Titelzeichnung von Prof. Tiemann, M. 25.—
Die Lektüre dieses Buches wird für jeden folgerichtig denkenden
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Schmerz um alles Große, das uns verloren ging, spricht aus diesen
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„Vom Deutschtum zu retten, was noch zu retten ist, bleibt des
Schweißes der Edlen wert. Unsere Hoffnung aber sei das kommende
Geschlecht. Ein Sklavenvolk sind wir noch nie gewesen. Seit
zweitausend Jahren hat unser Volk nach jähem Sturz immer wieder
sich emporgehoben.“
Mögen diese Worte, in denen die „Erinnerungen“ ausklingen, im ganzen
deutschen Volke Widerhall finden.
 Stein
Generalquartiermeister und Kriegsminister a. D.

Erlebnisse und Betrachtungen

aus der Zeit des Weltkrieges
Preis geh. M. 10.—, in vornehmem Einband,
Titelzeichnung von Prof. Tiemann, M. 14.50
Aus einer Zuschrift an den Verlag: Es wird Ihnen als Verleger eine Freude
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Die Kapitel „Reichstag“, „Regierung“, „Heer“ sind das Beste, was ich über
diese Dinge je gelesen habe.

K . F. K o e h l e r Ve r l a g L e i p z i g
 Generaloberst Freiherr von
Hausen
Erinnerungen an den
Marnefeldzug
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einleitenden vortrefflichen historischen Studie
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fließend geschriebene Feldaufzeichnungen.
 Die beiden weißen Völker!
(The two white nations!)
Deutsch-englische Erinnerungen eines
deutschen Seeoffiziers
von

Georg von Hase

Korvettenkapitän a. D.
Preis geheftet etwa M. 10.—, gebunden etwa M. 14.50
Zwei historische Zusammentreffen mit Teilen der englischen Kriegsflotte
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Schlachtkreuzer „Queen Mary“ und „Invincible“ entscheidend beigetragen.
Es gibt zur Zeit noch keine Darstellung der Schlacht vor dem Skagerrak,
in der ein Mitkämpfer in führender Stellung die Schlacht sowohl vom
militärischen Standpunkt wie vom Standpunkt des persönlichen
Miterlebens, frei von den Fesseln der Zensur, beschrieben und beurteilt
hätte. Das vorliegende Buch berichtet als erstes vom tatsächlichen
Geschehen und wird zu einem Heldensang deutschen Mutes und
deutscher Kraft.
K . F. K o e h l e r Ve r l a g L e i p z i g
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEINE
ERINNERUNGEN AUS OSTAFRIKA ***

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