SPLITTING OF THE ATOM Designed & sculpted by Arthur Dooley 1971

SPLITTING OF THE ATOM

Designed & sculpted by Arthur Dooley 1971

 

I have long been interested in this sculpture. Good feature below:

 

 

 

                                                                                     

Erected in 1971 by the Liverpool artist Arthur Dooley. He was given Ten tons of magnetic steel and two 37 inch Pole Tips. Dooley used the materials he had been given to represent a Beam splitting the Uranuim Nucleus, adding the “Dove of Peace” emerging among the fission products and emitted Neutrons. The pole tip which stands to one side of the main structure symbolises the Mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The sculpture's design is off an upright rectangle split down the centre which stands on a shallow base. In the crevice stands a steel pink beam about 1.5 times the height of concrete upright element. From the join of the beam and the crevice emerge thin metal poles converging to a point where there is roughly assembled metal Dove. To one side of the piece are two pole tips like tables

Taken from the first Cyclotron (Designed by Sir John Cockcroft)to operate outside the USA. This Cyclotron had been constructed by Sir James Chadwick and Dr. T.G Pickavance (Later the first director of the Rutherford Laboratory) in 1936-39 for Liverpool University. The data is produced on the properties of Neutrons was used in the development of the first Atom Bomb.

The location of this sculpture is based at Daresbury Laboratory. Keckwick Lane, Daresbury. It was unveiled in 1971.