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Except where noted these claimsare excerpted from an article published in the November 3, 2000 issue of Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review: “Temple MountFanatics Foment a New Thirty Years’ War” by Salvatore Montagna, JeffreySteinberg, Michele Steinberg, Scott Thompson, and Anton Chaitkin. [2]
These claims, like much conspiracy theory, are based on a carefully selected andarranged set of facts embedded in a pastiche of innuendo, assumption, opinion andinterpretation finely crafted to disguise a lack of causality or connectivitybetween these facts. Facts that disturb the placid flow of predetermined opinion areeither ignored, discounted as irrelevent or molded to fit the needs of the author.
Skilled conspiracy theorists can take a collection of unrelated facts and weave theminto a superficially plausible whole. Their tools are misdirection, selectedomissions and hidden logical fallacies. The first step in refuting such theories isto confirm the facts. |
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Although false accusations and attacks on Freemasonry are, in the main, based on the imaginative writings of nineteenth century authors, the events of the twentieth century have provided fertile ground for new attacks. Dating from at least the early 1980s, one attack by Lyndon LaRouche is an accusation that British Freemasonry, under the control of the House of Windsor, is secretly plotting to gain control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and build the third Temple. Like most attacks on Freemasonry, it can easily be debunked by identifying the errors in fact and logic.
The idea that freemasons of the world should unite to rebuild the Temple, or that they intended to do so, seems to have first appeared in early twentieth century Boston, or so it is reported in The Illustrated London News. One masonic response, laughing at the very concept, can be found here. |
| “On Oct. 16, Israeli police turned back members of the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, as they attempted to enter the Dome of the Rock to anoint the cornerstone of a Third Temple.” |
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There is no demonstrated link between the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement and any recognized body of Freemasonry. |
| “Through months of investigation, more than 30 interviews, and a review of thousandsof pages of primary source documents, some never previously made public, EIR hasestablished that the entire Temple Mount provocation is being run, top-down, by themost lunatic elements within the highest levels of British Freemasonry—with theblessing and involvement of members of the House of Windsor. |
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No documentation, references or citation are provided for any of these claims.”
LaRouche claims to provide these in an EIR SpecialReport, released in September 2001 and available for $150. The followingdocumented and verifiable facts are provided for free. |
| “This Masonic control is exerted through the Quatuor Coronati “research” lodge of theGrand Mother Lodge of British Freemasonry, headed by the Queen’s first cousin, theDuke of Kent, and run on a day-to-day basis by the Seventh Marquess of Northampton(Spencer “Spenny” Douglas David Compton), a maternal descendant of the Baringfamily, of British East India Company notoriety.” |
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Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 is a research lodge, publishing an annualproceedings, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, andraising funds by the sale of books and regalia. The financial accounts published in their annual journal, AQC, show no monies expended for research expeditions or research, with the exception of the annual Norman B. Spencer Prize Essay Award of £100.
Lord Northampton, the Marquess of Northampton was appointed by HRH the Duke of Kentas Pro Grand Master in succession to Lord Farnham, who retired in April 2001. InEngland, if the annually elected Grand Master is of the Royal family it is hisperogative to appoint his representative to carry out his duties. These duties aremainly ceremonial as the daily operations are the responsibility of the GrandSecretary and the several Boards Chairmen. |
| “Lord Northampton, who has been atop the Temple Mount conducting “Temple studies,”candidly has admitted in interviews, that he is an adherent of British Israelism….” |
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No citation is given: interviews with whom? Visit to the Temple Mount when?
British Israelism, as a Christiansectarian movement, has never adopted the rebuilding of the Temple as anobjective. See <britishisrael.co.uk>. |
| “Lord Northampton is, by his own admission, a practitioner of the satanic rituals ofAleister Crowley. Indeed, as he explained to an interviewer, Lord Northamptoninstalled one of the world’s leading “scholars” of the Golden Dawn cult, R.A.Gilbert, as the editor-in-chief of Ars Quatuor Coronarum, the theoretical journal ofthe lodge. Crowley had written an account of his “spiritual progress” in magic andSatanism under the title The Temple of Solomon the King.” |
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Lord Northampton‘s interest in the history of Fringe Freemasonry [3] is not an admission of satanic practices. The interviewer is unnamed and the interview uncited.
Robert A. Gilbert was Chairman of the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle for1996-99 and editor of Ars Quatuor Coronatorum for 1993-97. He became editorin chief in 1998 as no one was willing to assume the editorship unassisted. Themembers of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, as corporate members of Q.C. CorrespondenceCircle Ltd., annually elect their executive officers who in turn appoint the editor.”Installing” an officer in a Lodge is a piece of ritual and is not an indication ofany influence in selecting him for the position. The AQC editor is not an officer in the Lodge and would not be installed. On September 14, 1995 Gilbert presented apaper to QC on the topic of “Chaos out of order: the rise and fall of theSwedenborgian Rite” in which he makes numerous references to the Golden Dawn. Herefers to Westcott as having “unleashed” the Golden Dawn upon the world; not aflattering image. At the time he was Librarian-General of the research society,Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia [AQC 108 p. 148]. Gilbert has published nothing inAQC that would suggest he is a proponant or apologist for the Golden Dawn.[4]
The relevance of the Golden Dawn or Aleister Crowley, or what has been termed Fringe Freemasonry, to a claim that BritishFreemasonry is secretly plotting to rebuild the temple is not demonstrated. |
| “In December 1995, the “Jerusalem” freemasonic lodge was established, adjacent to theTemple Mount, in the Grotto of King Solomon, to work for the rebuilding of Solomon’sTemple. The lodge worked side by side with the on-the-ground networks of Jewish andChristian fundamentalist fanatics, to foment a bloody religious war over the controlof the Temple Mount. That such a lodge would be founded shortly after theIsrael-Palestine peace breakthroughs at Oslo—and just weeks after the assassinationof Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an architect of that peace—is surely nocoincidence.” |
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Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995. The founding ofLodge Jerusalem No. 91 under the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy was celebrated inJerusalem on December 28th. The Lodge was warranted to meet in Italy — it did notmeet in Jerusalem. The Grand Lodge of the State of Israel enjoys mutual recognitionwith the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy. This relationship precludes either GrandLodge warranting Lodges in the other’s geographic jurisdiction. [5]
Regardless, the lodge’s founding and Rabin’s assassination is a coincidence of unrelated events. None of these claims are documented, demonstrated or proven. |
| “The Jerusalem Lodge was founded by the Grand Master of Italian Regular Freemasonry,Giuliano Di Bernardo, the right-hand man of Lord Northampton on the Temple Mountproject. At the ceremony launching the Jerusalem Lodge, Di Bernardo declared, “Therebuilding of the Temple is at the center of our studies.” In June 1996, Di Bernardopublished an Italian edition of his book, Rebuilding the Temple, which was to bepublished in English by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge.” |
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The Regular Grand Lodge of Italy was founded inRome on April 17th 1993 with Prof. Giuliano Di Bernardo as its first Grand Master, and 107 founding members. For the previous three years he had been Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, from which body he had resigned shortly after the Grand Orient of Italy annual meeting at the end of March 1993. It is currently recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England, Grand Lodge of Scotland and Grand Lodge of Ireland. Many other Grand Lodges continue to recognize the Grand Orient of Italy. [6]
Any link between Giuliano Di Bernardo and Lord Northampton is not documentedor cited. The Quatuor Coronati Lodge has not published Di Bernardo’s Rebuildingthe Temple, it has not appeared in their catalogue, nor has a review appeared inAQC. The Italian edition, La ricostruzione delTempio. Il progetto massonico per una nuova utopia. was published by Venezia in Marsilio in 1996. It is not about physically rebuilding a temple in Jerusalem butrather details Di Bernardo’s personal belief that it is possible for the world’s monotheisticreligions to dwell together in harmony, creating a spiritual, global temple.
A freemason since 1961, Di Bernardo published Filosofia della Massoneria in1987, translated and revised as Freemasonry and Its Image of Man, A PhilosophicalInvestigation [ISBN 0-7104-5001-X] in 1989.
There is no mention of rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem in either book: “Gradually, operative activity took second place, with the symbolic work of the construction of aspiritual and invisible Temple becoming the main aim of the ‘new’ Freemasonry.” [Freemasonry and Its Image of Man p. 11.] |
| “Di Bernardo revealed that, while Foxman lacks intellectual capital, Lord Northamptonand he had met Foxman in Switzerland, just prior to the launching of the JerusalemLodge, to discuss their project, and have met with him on several other occasions.”There are strong relations between B’nai B’rith and Freemasonry,” Di Bernardoexplained.” |
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There is no connection between B’nai B’rith and regular Freemasonry. This story was promoted by Nikolaus Markow in Der Kamopf der dunklin Mächte (Frankfurt am Main: Welt-Dienst Verlag, 1944, p. 51.) Di Bernardo does not represent regular Freemasonry, only his Grand Lodge, and then only during his term as Grand Master. No reference, proof or citation is given attesting that Di Bernardo actually made this claim. |
| “The role of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge in the Temple Mount plot significantlypredates the launching of the Jerusalem Lodge. Dr. Asher Kaufman, a correspondingmember of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, did some of the first post-war archaeological”studies” of the Temple Mount, laying the foundations for the upsurge ofJewish fundamentalist assaults on the site. He was personally dispatched toJerusalem by the lodge’s Dr. T.E. Allibone, a senior figure in the British RoyalSociety, and one of Britain’s preeminent nuclear physicists, who served for 30 yearsas the “Lord of the Manor” of Britain’s most top-secret nuclear weaponslaboratory at Aldermaston.” |
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The annually published proceedings of the QuatuorCoronati Lodge No. 2076, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, from 1887 until 1973 haveno record of Asher Kaufman as a member of the Lodge or Correspondence Circle.
Prof. Thomas Edward Allibone (1903/11/11 – 2003/11/09), initiated into Lodge No. 3911 in Cambridge, joined the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle in 1928—he was never a member of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge. [7] Neither of them have published anything inArs Quatuor Coronatorum.
Prof. Allibone did not work for the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. He wasDirector of the AEI research laboratory in Aldermaston, a private, and unrelated,corporation. [8] |
| “With the deployment of Dr. Asher Kaufman to Jerusalem in 1967, justweeks after the conclusion of the Six Day War in June….” |
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Born and raised in Scotland, Dr. Asher Selig Kaufman worked for Dr. Allibone from1954 ’til 1959. He has been neither a member of the Quatuor Coronati CorrespondenceCircle nor a freemason. [9]
From 1959 until his retirement in the mid-1980s, he was a physicist on the facultyof the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Becoming interested in the Temple mount in1967, he did not begin active research until 1974. He is the author of Thetaper-shape of the second temple and the location of the treasury, Tel Aviv:Friends of the Midrashia, 1988 and The Temple of Jerusalem ; pt.1,2(1)Jerusalem : Har Yera’eh Press, 1991.
The Six-Day War was initiated by Israel against Egypt at 7:45 am, June 5, 1967, with a cease-fire effected by the UN Security Council on June 11th. [Cf. James Bamford, Body of Secrets. 2002.] |
| “Through Temple Mount Faithful founder Stanley Goldfoot, a member of the Stern Gangterrorist underground, Dr. Lambert Dolphin, a physicist at the Stanford ResearchInstitute in Menlo Park, California, was brought to Jerusalem in the early 1980s.” |
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On May 22, 1983 Dr. Dolphin’s team of eight people attempted to make the firstscientific survey of the rabbinical tunnel. Although invited by Yehuda Getz, theRabbi in charge of the tunnel, the survey team was turned away by plain clotheddetectives due to WAQF (the Moslem high command) objections. Dr. Dolphin has neitherattempted nor conducted further geophysical work at the Temple Mount. |
| “Dolphin set all of this down in a written account of his 1994 visit to Israel, accompanied by Missler and 70 ‘pilgrims.'” |
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Employed by SRI International in 1956, Dr. Lambert T. Dolphin retired as Senior Research Physicist in 1987. He has never been a freemason, and has been a self-described evangelical Christian since 1962. [10] |
| “But, under the sponsorship of the British Crown, the Club of the Isles, and theBritish masonic structures, the “errant seed” had been injected into thereligious and political life of the Jewish community in Palestine long before thelaunching of the current Temple Mount project.” |
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No factual links have been demonstrated or documented. |
| “The first excavation of the holy sites in Jerusalem, centered on the Temple Mount,was carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund, under the direction of Gen. SirCharles Warren, during 1867-70. This expedition launched the British freemasonic”Temple Mount project.” In 1884, Warren was one of only nine freemasons who foundedthe Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and he became its first head.” |
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Lieut.-Gen. Sir Charles Warren GCMG, KCB (1840 – 1927/01/21) wasa founding member of the premier masonic research lodge, Quatuor Coronati Lodge No.2076, warranted on November 28, 1884. He was elected its first Master for 1886-67.He wrote two papers for the AQC: one on the orientation of temples (1886) and theother on military lodges (1899). He wrote nothing, for the Quatuor Coronati, on KingSolomon’s Temple, any alleged “Temple Mount project” or on Jerusalem. |
“‘A spokesman for Militi Templi Scotia, the Scottish Knights Templar, admitted to TheSunday Post, “We are currently involved in an attempt to remove control of the holysites of Jerusalem from the Israeli Government.’
Chamish Confirmed? Man Killed In secret Holy Land Power Struggle? EXCLUSIVE -By Colin Grant <www.dcthomson.co.uk> 1-17-00
Found on Barry Chamish’s website barrychamish.com.” |
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Militi Templi Scotia has no connection with the Grand Lodge of Scotland orFreemasonry.
Barry Chamish is an Israeli conspiracytheorist who claims that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York iscontrolled by the Society of Jesus and is Israel’s number one enemy. |
| “Two weeks later, in London, the greatest gathering offreemasons in memory took place, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of thefounding of the United Grand Lodge of England, and to inaugurate His Royal Highnessthe Duke of Kent as the new Grand Master of Masonry. It was out of that gathering,according to T.E. Allibone, that the decision was made to dispatch Kaufman toJerusalem, launching the Quatuor Coronati drive to locate the precise spot where theThird Temple would be built.” |
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The 250th anniversary of the first Grand Lodge meeting was held on June 27, 1967. Itwas not the anniversary of the United Grand Lodge of England, founded in 1813.
The Duke of Kent was elected at the Quarterly Communication of Grand Lodge held June14, 1967 and Installed as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England at theJune 27th meeting held in the Royal Albert Hall.
Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 held its meeting on June 28, 1967, at which 88 newmembers were elected to the Correspondence Circle, bringing their number to 7,106.No mention is made in the meeting’s minutes of Jerusalem or the Temple. [AQC Vol. 80,pp. 207-9]
Prof. Thomas Edward Allibone BCE is a Fellow of the British Royal Society, perhapsits oldest living member; he was never a member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076.No citation is given for the claim that Dr. Allibone made this statement. Dr.Allibone, although 98 years old, is lucid and does not recall making such a statement. [11]
Dr. Allibone lent his name to The Impact of the natural sciences on archaeology in 1970. He also wrote The release and use of atomic energy, as an introductory textbook in 1961. [12] |
1.  King Solomon’s Temple—View from the northeast corner. Plate 6. The Bible andKing Solomon’s Temple in Masonry, by John Wesley Kelchner. 1951: A. J. HolmanCompany, Philadelphia. A scale model based on Kelchner’s research and constructed by Albert Wesley Hilt in 1923 for the Holman Bible Company was displayed at the New York World’s Fair in 1960 and resided for many years in the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania museum. ^
2. Others have taken upthis claim. A variation on this theme can be found at www.redmoonrising.com/tm.htm. Anothergroup, the Watch Unto Prayer ministry can be found online at watch.pair.com/chronology.html butprovides no information as to who or where they are. The following undated quotefrom their site echoes LaRouche:
“HM Queen Elizabeth II’s Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), according to its leaders,today cites the Biblical Archaeology Society as the foremost source updating BritishFreemasons Sir Charles Warrren’s work on the question of rebuilding Solomon’s Templeon Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Mount) in Jerusalem. The Biblical Archaology Society,founded by Ivy Leagues graduate Hershel Shanks in 1974,…has carried out theforemost debate on the site for rebuilding Solomon’s Temple based upon the work ofBritish Mason Sir Charles Warren. The Society has produced more than 17 articles inits varous publications for Christian Fundamentalist consumption…
“PEF cites twoauthors of note for the Biblical Archaeology Review: Asher Kaufmann, who is a memberof the “Correspondence Circle” of the Quatuor Coronati [Lodge], as well as a protegeof Aldermaston/British Museum scientist T.E. Allibone, who dispatched him to Israelto poke around Al-Haram Al Sharif after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; and LeenRitmeyer, an agent of Lord Jacob Rothschild. ^
3. “Fringe Masonry” is a term coined by Ellic [Paul] Howe (1910/09/20-1991/09/28) in “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum Vol. 85 (1972). Strictly speaking, it refers to the practices and beliefs of a small body of nineteenth century freemasons working outside of regular Freemasonry. The term has grown to encompass those freemasons whose interest in mysticism and the occult led them to such organizations as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD) and the Ordo Templi Orientis. “Fringe Masonry existed. By examining it in a rational manner and in the context of its time we can defuse it and render it worthless as a weapon of attack on mainstream Freemasonry.” John Hamill. Ars Quauor Coronatorum Vol. 109. p. 214. ^
4. Correspondence from William Cooper, Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Archives and Library, and member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge; and AQC Vols. 106 – 113. ^
5. On December 15, 2001, the Gran Loggia Regolare D’Italia elected Fabio Venzi as Grand Master. Information on the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy is taken from correspondence from Fabio Venzi and Giuliano Di Bernardo. ^
6. The Regular GrandLodge of Italy notes on their website, www.glri.org/Regioni/Lazio/logge/lira e spada/liraespada.htm that on December 28, 1995 they celebrated the founding of Lodge Jerusalem No.91 in Jerusalem: |
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“28 dicembre 1995 I FF. S. Mieli e F. Giannetti escono dalla L. per fondare la L.Jerusalem N. 91 che viene consacrata nelle cave del Tempio di Re Salomone aGerusalemme; fra gli ufficiali consacratori figura il F. M. Segre.” ^
| In correspondence received by the author from the Assistant Grand Secretary of theGrand Lodge of the State of Israel: |
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1. We recognize the regular G. Lodge of Italy
2. We do not agree to other recognized Grand Jurisdictions warranting Lodges inIsrael.
3. We are not aware of the regular Grand Lodge of Italy having established a Lodgein December 1995, in Jerusalem.
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7. The annually publishedproceedings of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076,Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, from Volume I, in 1887, until Volume 31, in 1918,included a list of the members of the Correspondence Circle entitled the St. John’sCard; from then until Volume 86, in 1973, the list included only the names of newmembers. In 1973 the St. John’s Card was discontinued. A list of the members of theLodge was, most years, also included—membership was restricted to 40: in 1967 itwas 22 while today it is 33. T.E. Allibone is noted as joining the CorrespondenceCircle in 1928. Asher Kaufman’s name does not appear in any list of Lodge members orthe St. John’s Card published between 1887 and 1973. The Q.C. Correspondence CircleLtd, a non-profit making body, was formed on November 1, 1974: all full members ofthe lodge were elected corporate members from which were drawn the Council or Boardof Directors. ^
8. From 1946 until hisretirement in 1978. Prof. Allibone was Director of the Associated ElectricalIndustries Research Laboratory in Aldermaston. Aldermaston is a small community some80 km west of London containing a number of high tech companies and researchfacilities. It is also the site of the headquarters of the UK’s Atomic WeaponsEstablishment. The AWE is responsible for the design and manufacture of theTrident submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile system. The AWE wasmanaged by Hunting-BRAE Ltd, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). CurrentlyBritish Nuclear Fuels and the US company Lockheed Martin are part of AWE Managementconsortium which runs Aldermaston and its Burghfield research site. Prof. Allibonedid not work for AWE, he worked for AEI. ^
9. Personalcorrespondence to the site webmaster, Trevor W. McKeown,October 10, 2001, deposited in the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon Archives. ^
10. Conversation with thesite webmaster, Trevor W. McKeown, September 18, 2001 and gleaned from www.ldolpin.org. ^
11. Personalcorrespondence to the site webmaster, Trevor W. McKeown, September 24, 2001,deposited in the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon Archives. ^
12. The Impact of theNatural Sciences on Archaeology, A Joint Symposium of The Royal Society and theBritish Academy, Organized by a Committee Under the Chairmanship of T.E. Allibone,F.R.S., Published for the British Acadamy by Oxford University Press, London: 1970.SBN: 19 725922 7. 185 p. 21cm x 30cm. Of 17 papers on topics such as radiocarbondating, and archaeomagnetic methods, none refer to Jerusalem or the Temple. Dr.Allibone did not write the preface or any of the papers.
A short biography of Dr. Allibone can be found on the dustjacket for The Release and Use of Atomic Energy: |
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“The author of this book, T.E. Allibone C.B.E., D.Sc., Ph.D.,F.R.S., has been Director, Associated Electrical Industries ResearchLaboratory, Aldermaston, since 1946. Awarded M-V Scholarship to SheffieldUniversity, he produced the first pure metallic zirconium and some of its alloys.After hearing Sir James Chadwick lecture on the disintegration of elements witha-particles, he obtained scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridgeand suggested to Sir Ernest Rutherford that he should build apparatus to acceleratecharged particles to high energy and look for artificial disintigration. So beganthe first attempts to produce transmutation. These were taken up a few years laterby Cockcroft and Walton after Gamow had propounded the theory that protons of modestenergy had a finite chance of penetrating the energy barrier around a nucleus. Dr.Allibone has lectured and televised widely on many aspects of fission and fusionexperiments; he gave the Faraday Lectures in 1946/7 and again in 1956/7 on atomicenergy, his Presidential Address (A) at British Association was on thermonuclearscience and the Christmas Lectures 1959/60 at the Royal Institute were the subjectof this book.
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| The Release and Use of Atomic Energy. T.E. Allibone C.B.E.,D.Sc., Ph.D., F.R.S., Based on the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.London: Chapman & Hall, 1961. 158 p. [back dustjacket flap] ^ |
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