Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group

The Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group (CSAWG) was a left wing pacifist group set up in 1932.^[1]

In 1937 responding to concerns about the use of poison gas bombs, the CSAWG organised an experiment in the Trinity College room of John Fremlin to determine the rate at which a gas might leak into a sealed room. The work was published by an editorial committee^[2] consisting of

J. D. Bernal
H. A. Harris
A. F. W. Hughes
Joseph Needham
N. W. Pirie
J. S. Turner
D. H. Valentine
E. B. Verney
C. H. Waddington
Arthur Walton
W. A. Wooster

The book was given a hostile review in Nature by retired general Charles Foulkes.^[3] Jack Haldane also queried the rigour of the scientific methodology.^[4]

Further notable members of CSAWG

Frederick Sanger
Marjory Stephenson
Maurice Wilkins

References

^ David Edgerton (2005), Warfare State (Warfare state ed.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521856361, OCLC 63203065, OL 20652308M, 0521856361
^ A Group of Cambridge Scientists (1937). The Protection of the Public from Aerial Attack. London: Victor Gollancz: Left Book Club.
^ Goldsmith, Maurice (1980). Sage: A Life of J. D. Bernal. Hutchinson.
^ Wilkins, Maurice (2003). Maurice Wilkins: The Third Man of the Double Helix: An Autobiography. Oxford University Press.