C.P. Snow

Biography

English realist writer, physicist, chemist and statesman. Knight Bachelor, Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Snow was educated at the College of Leicestershire and Rutland in his native Leicester, after which he graduated from Cambridge University, where since 1930, having received at 25 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (for work on spectroscopy), he taught at the College of Christ. However, his scientific and literary activities were interrupted by the appointment of a government adviser on weapons and the selection of scientific personnel. Henceforth, Snow held various posts in the governments of Great Britain, mainly Labor. So, in 1940-1944 he was the technical director of the Ministry of Labor, in 1945-1960 - the commissar of the civil service, in 1964-1966 - the parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Technology of the Labor Cabinet of Harold Wilson. In 1957, Snow was elevated to noble dignity, and in 1964 he was made a life peer without the right to transfer the title by inheritance in a baronial status. Since 1950, he was married to the writer Pamela Hensford Johnson and had a son, Philip (born in 1952). In the years 1961-1964, Snow held an elected post of rector of the University of St. Andrews. He was friends with the mathematician G. H. Hardy, the physicist P. M. S. Blackett, the biophysicist J. D. Bernal, and the cultural historian Jacques Barzen.