BR TO W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. / ELLING AANNESTAD, 31 JAN. 1931
BRACERS 47004. TLS. Norton papers, Columbia U.
Proofread by A. Duncan

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Beacon Hill School
Harting,
Petersfield,1
31st Jan. 1931.

Dear Aannestad,

Thank you for your letter of January 30th. The most noteworthy person at Cambridge on modern physics at the moment is Dirac. I do not know whether he is capable of popular writing, but his style in technical writing is so clear and admirable that I should think he would be. He is a tip-top man, who goes in with Heisenberg and Schrödinger. I can’t at the moment remember which college Dirac is at, but you will have no difficulty in finding out.

I am supposing for the moment that you wish for an authoritative popular book on modern physics. There is a man at John’s, called M.H.A. Newman, who has a lot of interesting ideas out of which a book could be made, though I don’t suppose the possibility has ever occurred to him. So far as I know, he is neither married nor engaged, so I am afraid you would have no hold on him.

You might be well advised to visit Littlewood, who is the professor of pure mathematics; he is at Trinity. He might give you good advice. You could tell him that I sent you.

I think you should visit J.B.S. Haldane, but if possible see him rather than his wife. His wife is a Jewess who made her own living for many years and imagines herself very shrewd and everyone else bent on swindling her.

I do not know whether Adrian would do you a popular book. If he would, he would be worth having.

It strikes me that Jeans’s immense success may have made the other dons envious, so that they are likely to be more willing to write popular books that they would have been a year or two ago. At the same time, as you know, the art of popular writing on scientific subjects is a very difficult one, and it would be rash to make a contract with a man unless one had some evidence of his capacity in that line. Most men of science, when they attempt popular writing, display contempt for the reader and talk to him as elderly gentlemen talk to adventurous little boys. Few readers are willing to pay money for this. It is possible, however, that some of these reflections may have already occurred to you.

Yours,
Bertrand Russell.

P.S. Please make my compliments to your typist for philosophic appreciation of the deceitfulness of the sensible world.

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