Patrick Blackett was an accomplished British scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1948. He joined Birkbeck to head the physics department and to run his own laboratory.  

Although he was only at Birkbeck between 1933 and 1937 (when he left for a Chair at the University of Manchester), these were important years for him as a scientist and a leftist commentator. For Birkbeck, Blackett’s appointment would have been a major coup, especially since he brought with him a sizable grant from The Royal Society part of which was used to design an electromagnet. The largest magnet in the UK, “Josephine” weighed 11,000 kilos and was originally used to “study the energy spectrum of the cosmic rays”. It was so unwieldy that a wooden hut had to be constructed on the land set aside for building Malet Street.  

Along with J. D. Bernal, Aldous Huxley, and Leonard Woolf, Blackett organised the “For Intellectual Liberty” group, a popular front movement aiming to publicize the difficulties experienced by German Jews. He also established with Bernal the Academic Assistance Council, which continues today under its new name of Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), aiming to assist academics fleeing tyrannical regimes.