and -Death

LEADING Soviet physicist
who “returned from the
dead” after a car crash has
been awarded this year’s Nobel
prize for physics.

_ Prof. Lev Landau, who is still
Tecuperating in hospital from
his accident last January, said
In Moscow upon hearing the good
news: “I feel immensely proud
of Soviet science.”

The prize, which this year is
Worth $50,000, was given for
Prof. Landau’s “pioneering
theories for condensed matter,
€specially liquid helium.”
Famed Soviet author, Boris
Polevoy, said in Moscow last
July that Prof. -Landau ‘‘died’’

retreated’

in January. He said ‘‘doctors re-
corded clinical deajh,” but then
Soviet physicians, yesorted to
special installations ang, ‘‘death
retreated.”

Special drugs were flown to
Moscow from Britain for Prof.
Landau and scientists from other
countries also fought for his life.
Dr. Wilder Penfield, world-
famous Canadian neurosurgeon,
flew from Montreal to the
Soviet Union and acted in a con-
sultative capacity during some
of the most critical moments of
the case.

Prof. Landau was born at Baku,
Azerbaijan, in 1908 and obtained
a doctor’s degree in Leningrad

Ow can underground nuc:
lear tests be detected —

a So controlled? This ques:
ot is the last technical ob:
nage to East-West agreement
na treaty banning all tests
pain and America have
Eeremorced by the scientific
“aa ce to agree that nation-
in €ans of detection can con-
tests in the atmosphere,

®n land and under water.
Sut they insist on exclud-
8 underground tests — on
© Plea that you cannot tell
an earthquake
inspection.

test from

Without on-site

A

| _ from, the time-of Eisen-
| x S S: “open skies” plan,
Oviet Union has rejected

oo Seek

| ees inspection as being
ale ; aa

a nt to legalized espion

| * * *
So there was a flurry in the
Acid When both Pravda and
; ae recently published ar-
Site favoring the idea of
Omatic recording stations:

s

— and periodically in-
a ected by an international

Ody. :

pies is the “black box”
‘ Posal made by the last
8Wash conference, in which

viet scientists took part.
iG - Keilis-Borok, who, io-
T with Natalia Kondor-
aaa Was one of the au-
AS ot the Izvestia articles,
iH By seting some of the
hee (black boxes) in
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; Natural earthquakes will

plotted and eliminated.
a" underground nuclear
ann Carried out, the sta-
Sec will Tecord it with such
Sib lon it will.even be pos-
€ to deduce some of the

_ . WORTH
___ READING

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* Semyonov. Price 20c.

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age,

Several times following the crash

little black boxes are
hew hope of mankind

at the age of 19.

test conditions. Almost all the
difficulties in recording weak
shock waves against the back-
ground of seismic noise would
disappear.”

Seismic noise, he explain-
ed, was interference set up by
sea waves beating the coast,
by heavy machinery and traf-
fic and other surface disturb-
ances.

* * *

Could the boxes be put
somewhere other than the
the correct positions?

“Tt couldn’t be done,” said
Dr. Keilis-Borok. “If the
boxes were put somewhere
else, the different timing of

NATALIA KO

recorded shock waves would
show at once.”

Could the boxes be tamper-
ed with? :

“That’s a question for crim-
inologists,” he smiled. “I must
emphasize that the black box-
es are only to supplement the
existing network of observa-
tion stations which each coun-
try operates.” He confirmed
that Soviet observatories had
recorded U.S. tests.

In detecting nuclear tests,
the first essential was to elim-
inate earthquakes. This could
be done by fixing the depth
of the starting point — or
focus — on the shock waves;
any focus more than a few

miles deep could not possibly

LEV LANDAU.

“The Americans have got a
focus only nine miles below
the surface,’ said Natalia
Kondorskaya, ‘‘but claim their
method is so complicated it
cannot be reduced to a set of
rules.

“Yet I'm teaching my as-
sistants a similar method us-
ing reflected waves. With
it we can plot a focus only
s.x miles below ground.

“This eliminates 80 percent
of all earth tremors; the. re-
maining shocks, which are

near the surface, can easily
be distinguished by other cri-
teria,

especially by radial

%

NDORSKAYA

components of transverse

waves. :
* * *

“Every technical problem
has its difficulties, of course,”
said Dr. Keilis-Borok, ‘“‘and
can only be solved by getting
down to it — not by endless
discussions and inventing
doubts.

“Jt is as harmful to mini-
mize the difficulties as to ex-
aggerate them, but greater
problems have been solved by
scientists in the arms race.”

“All the difficulties will un-

-doubtedly be overcome with

co-operation,” said Natalia
Kondorskaya. “I’m confident
of that.”

PETER TEMPEST.

Sop kee ee eo we ey

After 15 years...
Lardner finds work

HE announcement on Nov. 21

that independent film _ pro-
ducer Otto Preminger has hired
Ring Lardner Jr., to write a
screenplay of Patrick Dennis’
novel, “Genius,” marks the re-
turn to public life of the second
of the original Hollywood 10,
blacklisted by the motion pic-
ture industry in 1947 for defiance
of the Un-American Committee.

In a statement released in New
York, Preminger, who first broke
the blacklist by hiring Dalton
Trumbo to write the screenplay
for Leon Uris’ “Exodus,” said he
was hiring Lardner because ‘‘he
ig an excellent comedy writer
and because we have worked to-
gether successfully in the past.’’
(Lardner wrote the screenplay
of ‘Forever Amber’’ for Premin-
ger in 1947).

The only surviving son of the
late, great American shortstory

writer, Ring Lardner, Jr. gave
credit to Preminger’s hiring of
Trumbo as “‘the most important
individual step”’ to end the black-

@

RING LARNDER, JR.

list, but insisted that the black-
list ‘“‘still exists.”

“There’s a general delusion
that it’s in the dim past, but it
is -still in operation in both
motion pictures and television.”

Priestleycomments. .

ORRESPONDENTS were

wondering recently what J.
3B. Priestley, the British novelist

’and playwright, would say at his

press. conference in the USSR’s
Writers Union Building. °

_ Ten yearg ago, Priestley was
one of the writers in a special
Collier’s issue who described the
imaginary defeat of the Soviet
Union in an imaginary war. But
the Soviet Union didn’t go down
and Priestley went there last
month to investigate, socialism
with his own eyes.

He travelled thousands of miles
and met hundreds of people.
When he was interviewed by a
bevy of correspondents, he told
them: ’

“T am being entirely frank with
you. Almost everything I have
seen has been better than I ex-
pected. This is a new, better
Soviet Union, more prosperous
-and freer and happier, able to
make a magnificent contribution
to our world civilization, which
we must either improve _ to
gether or may utterly destroy.”
Priestly compared the tremen-
dous construction projects in
Soviet cities with the “hesitant”
and ‘“‘slow’’ pace of British build-
ing. He lauded the country’s ‘‘en-
thusiastic drive towards educa-
tion,’’ in the arts and sciences, in
scholarship and technology.

“T have seen nothing like it
elsewhere, ”’ he said.

He noted the unity and con-
tentment of the peoples of this

IF YOU’RE BROKE

If you’re broke and on your uppers,
Missing breakfasts, dinners, suppers:
[If your face is drawn and thin
And your tummy’s caving. in;

If you're shiv’ring with the cold
Because your underwear is old
And lets the weather in:—

Tighten up your belt, Pal,

And don’t shed any. tears.

You can still be in the gravy

If you go and join the navy.

For it’s loaded down with underwear
To last a thousand years.

The above lines came in with the following obser-
vation: If our glorious Minister of National Defence
would order the Navy to give us a union suit or two for
the winter it would feel much nicer to have the wool =:
pulled over our thighs instead of our eyes, as has been

multi-national land, especially
evident in Tashkent, the metro-
polis of Central Asia. “. . . In
this city, two thousand miles

J. B. PRIESTLEY

from Moscow,” he said, ‘people
of different racial origins, some
of them traditional enemies for
a thousand years, now live in one
city, peacefully and contentedly.
“You may ask me how I know
they are content. :
“My answer would be that I
studied their public behaviour,
especially when I joined 70,000
of them in watching a football

match or mingled with them on

their national day.

“People who feel frustrated al-
ways behave badly in big crowds.
Those citizens of Tashkent were
wonderfully good-humored.”’
—ART SHIELDS

@ L, STILLWELL