Published: April 2001 by: The Independent on Sunday

For three days, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten had been running advertise ments for an unusual g'a1a lect1lre to be held in the Festival Hall at Christiania University. Now, on the evening of 6 March 1903, figures in top hats and wasp-waisted skirts trampled through the snow, silhouetted against the light from the blazing windows as they mounted the steps to the columned entrance. Professor Kristian Birkeland had arranged this unusual event to unveil to the eli,te of Christiania (as Oslo was then called) his electro- magnetic cannon. There had been many articles in the press about his strange invention. So far, however, only the professor's shareholders and a few weapons-makers had been able to see it. Yet, although the gun was still in an early phase of development, the escalating naval arms race between Gennanyand Britain made its commercial potential considerable. By means of this lecture, Birkeland hoped to raise 50,000 crowns to develop his cannon into an electromagnetic torpedo-launcher. Looking at the assembled dig- nitaries, he felt sure that he would have the pledges he needed by the end of the night. The front row alone included the minister of defence, the head of the anny; the head of coastal artillery, and representatives of various arms manufacturers. Behind them sat a number of university professors, Birkeland's friends, and his long-Suffering wife-to-be, Ida.

After welcoming them, Birkeland brieflyexp- lained the principles of the gun, using a large dia- gram. An instinctive showman, he built up tension by reassuring his listeners that they would neither hear nor see anything except the noise of the 10kg projectile hitting the 13cm-thick wooden target at the other end of the hall; they should not be afraid.

Then he walked slowly to die cannon, repeated his reassurances, and pulled die starring-switch

An almighty roar filled the hall, a large flame issued from the mouth of the cannon, and a deafening hiss accompanied a huge arc of brilliant light that shot out towards the audience. The 3,000 amp current had short-circuited, with dramatic results. Chaos ensued. Several people in the audience panicked, and the hall emptied in a few minutes, despite Birkeland's shouts that there was no danger. As he related to an assistant later, "It was the most dramatic moment of my life. With this missile, I shot my stock down from a value of 300 crowns to zero, although it did hit the bull's-eye!"

The cannons failure was a huge blow to Birkeland's hopes as a scientist: not because the weapon itself was parricularly important to his thinking, but because - having largely exhausted official sources of research funding - he needed the money in era! heading "Comets", and mey were not clearly separated from oilier "heavenly bodies" until me early 1600s, when Galileo Galilei described mem as me boreale aurora or "me northern dawn" - a designation later modified to Aurora Borealis. Auroras seen in lower latitudes often had a rosy hue reminiscent of dawn. Birkeland preferred the Latin term /umine borea/i, "the northern light", as in me far north me auroras were usually white or yellowish green and bore no resemblance to dawn. Countless folkloric explanations for the Lights had gained ground through the generations. The Vikings thought they were Valkyries, female messengers of Odin. In Iceland, legend had it that they were dangerous spirits whose recreations included playing ball with the heads of children. Other theories included: mat the Lights were reflections from the silvery shoals of herring swimming close to the water's surface; or that they were the light bouncing off ice- bergs rocking in the polar sea; or that mey were created by sunlight reflecting off the wings of migrating geese.

By the 19th century, mere was hunger for a scientific explanation, yet no wholly convincing memory had been posited. For Birkeland, who was born in 1868 and had shown dazzling scientific ~ gifts from an early age, it was a perfect target: a problem that baffled the best minds of the day, I and whose solution would confim his precocious brilliance beyond any possible doubt.i He was not, in truth, a very prepossessing candidate for die role of great scientist. The son of a ~ Norwegian farmer, short and prematurely bald- ~ ing, he was a chaotic, undisciplined dreamer: a hypochondriac who was prey to insomnia and "nervous freezing fits", which were probably ~ bouts of depression. In some ways, he seemed barely capable of managing die basics of everyday living. He did not possess a diary. Important infonnation, equations, telephone nwnbers and social engagements were written on: scraps of paper to be used as bookmarks, or filed under cushions and in his pockets. He was prone, all his life, to forget appointments - most notably when he agreed to give a lecture that clashed with his own wedding. (He dealt with this double-booking by giving the talk at breakneck speed in full formal dress before racing to the ceremony with minutes to spare.) In later life, he became addicted to whisky and the sedative veronal. Yet he was a gifred inventor who ~ 59 patents (including those for the first mechanical hearing-aid and the first electric blanket). And, although few would have predicted it in 1899 - when he set out to study the Aurora in earnest - he would ultimately revolutionise our whole conception of the relationship between the Earth and its solar system. Birkeland was aware at that time of at least two dozen competing proposed solutions to the great unsolved mystery of the Aurora Borealis. The most sophisticated posited magnetic, electric or cosmic forces as the main causal element; but Birkeland had a theory that involved all three ele- ments. If he could prove it, it would not only solve the riddle of the Lights but also overturn conventional wisdom about the solar system and the Earth's place within it. For him, the Lights marked the threshold between the visible and invisible worlds; they were the link between the planet and the vast, uncontrollable and unseen forces that shaped the universe.

Determined to solve what he and others saw as the pre-eminent scientific problem of his day, Birkeland had taken the audacious step - four years before his cannon demonstration - of spending the entire winter of 1899-1900 in a mountain-top observatory at Kaafjord in the far north of Norway, a desolate place where the Lights were known to appear more frequendy rl1an elsewhere. The five-month experience had been a profound and life-altering one. Two col- leagues died in an avalanche; another lost his fin- gers to frostbite; at one point, a ferocious snow- storm trapped them in the observatory for 21 days without a break. But there were consola- tions. For a start, there had been the unforget- table experience of watching the Lights from dle most perfect viewpoint imaginable. Seeing a streamer of light moving towards them in a huge arc across the heavens, pulsating and writhing before turning into a pennant with points oflight coursing down in parallel lines like the strings of a harp, to be joined by another bolt of green-white light stretching out beside the first - Birkeland and his companions had felt the hairs on the backs of dIeir necks stand up, as if dIeyhad been wimessing an appearance of an angelic host.

The data dIey amassed - relating to tempera- ture, air pressure, humidity and variations in dIe Earth's magnetic field - were incomparably more comprehensive than any collected before. Equally valuable, however, was dIe three-week period inJanuary 1900 when dIe snowstorm kept dIe party barricaded in dIeir cabin. This forced Birkeland to analyse his data with: an unbroken intensity iliat might not odIerwise have been pos- sible. Night after night, he would work furiously, scribbling equations, sensing dIat he was close to a breakthrough. And so he was Birkeland quickly confirmed dIe reports of earlier observers dIat dIe auroras appeared only during magnetic disturbances. He then discovered - reading up what was already known about auroras - dIat major appearances, big enough to be seen in more soudIerly latitudes, frequently coincided with the appearance of sunspots. He already knew iliat sunspots were not the only events on dIe sun related to auroras. In 1859 Sir Richard Carrington of dIe Kew Observatory had observed a flare coming from the sun - "two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out" - and had noted that this "conflagration" was followed 18 hours later by a great magnetic storm iliat disrupted telegraphic communications and coincided with tremendous auroras seen in Hawaii, Jamaica, Chile and Australia. Many scientists dismissed the connection between activity on the sun and auroboras because there were often sunspots without auroras, or vice-versa; and because they did not believe that charged particles could reach the Earth from such a distance. Birkeland, however, confined in his mountaintop observatory, was becoming increasingly convinced of a solar-terrestrial relationship. Finally, one evening, he concluded that his hunch was correct: the force disturbing the magnetic fidd came directly from the sun in nar- row, high-velocity beams of negatively charged particles (electrons) called cathode rays.

Birkeland sunnised that, because these beams were narrow and focused, they often missed the Earth completely (which was why sunspots did not always result in auroras); but that sometimes these active particles hit the magnetic field of the Earth and followed the field lines down towards the poles, where they struck atoms in the atmosphere and the energy created by the collisions was emitted as light. That explained why the Northern Lights appeared only during magnetic storms; the cathode rays from the sun were mov- ing beams of electrons, creating electric currents which, in turn, made their own magnetic fields. Birkeland's theory also explained why, on one or two occasions that winter, similar auroras appeared at 27 -day intervals: sunspots took 27 days to make a circuit of the sun. Birkeland summarised his conclusions in a book published in the spring of 1901. It made the front pages in Norway under headlines such as "Riddle of the Aurora Solved!" But the response in the wider scientific community was discourag- ing. In Britain - increasingly the world's predom- inant nation, where science was concerned - reviews of the book were few and unfavourable. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, for example, attacked the book as fundamentally flawed. British scientists believed strongly that space was an empty vacuilln. i-Qrd Kelvin, a former president of the Royal Society, had stated in 1892 that: "There is absolutely conclusive evidence against the supposition that terrestrial magnetic storms are due to magnetic actions of the sun; or to any kind of dynamical action taking place within the sun... The supposed connection between magnetic stoffice and sunspots is unreal, and me seeming agreement between the periods has been mere coincidence." Few scientists were prepared. to stand up against this unequivocal statement from such an esteemed figure. Birkeland was bitterly disappointed, and he determined to redouble his research. But mere was one major obstacle in his pam: lack of money. He was out of favourwith the Norwegian government, despite me success of his book in Norway. He had acquired a reputation for being cavalier with budgets and a hopeless financial organiser - accusations, Birkeland knew, that were probably true. If he was going to amass me weight of incontrovertible evidence that would convince his peers, he would have to find me money him- self. Hence me importance of me cannon.

A LESSER MAN might have seen me setback at me Festival Hall as a disaster. Birkeland, typically, did not. He believed strongly mat "You learn more from your mistakes than from your victo- ries." Indeed, me cannon itself had begun as a setback. Birkeland had been trying to develop a circuit-breaker for use in Norway's growing hydro-dectric industry (for which he worked as a consultant) but had on several occasions been thrown high into me air by a massive spark mat jumped between the main conductor of the switch and me bar that he pulled to break the cur rent. Finally, in a moment of inmitive brilliance, he realised that precisely me same phenomenon could be used to make an electromagnetic gun.

Now, again, Birkeland saw a positive side to his problem. It would have been a simple task to have modified his gun to prevent such short circuits from recurring, but he had seen a more lucrative application for his technology. In 1903, Europe faced an agricultural crisis, caused by a shortage of fertiliser. The sole agricultural fer- tiliser then available was a natural sodium nitrate mined in Chile called "Chile saltpetre", and reserves were near exhaustion. Soon, it was thought, it would be impossible to feed the world's population, unless another source of fertiliser was found.

It had been in Birkeland's mind for some time that it would be possible to produce nitrogen by artificially reproducing the power of lightning. The strange smell left after a lightning flash was of nitrogen being oxidised by the intense energy of the bolt - exactly the process needed to make fertiliser. The high-energy electric arcs that Birkeland's cannon produced when it short-cir- cuited during testing were exacdy like bolts of lightning, and the disastrous demonstration in the Festival Hall convinced him that this faulty element of his gun design could be combined with electromagnetic furnace technology to ionise air and produce nitric acid.

To do this commercially, Birkeland teamed up with a budding industrialist, Sam Eyde, whom he had met at a dinner party. The seven-year part- nership that ensued was fraught with misttust and ill-feeling (and would have been even worse if Birkeland had known that his chances of a Nobel Prize for his invention of the nitrogen-producing process were secredy sabotaged by Eyde's insis- tence on sharing the credit for it). But it was highly profitable for both. In August 1903, their furnace produced its first saltpetre. Two years later, Birkeland was able to sell shares in the ven- ture (subsequendy to be known as Norsk Hydro) worth 75,000 crowns - equivalent to 15 times his annual salary - while retaining a 5,000 crowns a year consultancy, guaranteed for life. "Make an invention to earn you a million, and then you can think of science," the British scientist, Professor Silvanus Thompson, had once said to Birkeland. Now Birkeland was ready to think about science. He ploughed much ofhis fortune into creating the laboratory he needed at Christiania University.

TO THE OUTSIDE observer, Birkeland's labora- tory must have seemed to be the lair of some medieval visionary; The noises, flashes, smells and heat were overwhelming, and lurking within were a number of very real dangers. The vacuum pumps released poisonous mercury fumes; the small amount of radium salt that had been given to Birkeland by Marie Curie was left on a shelf beside a box of new light bulbs, leaking lethal radi- ation; explosions and implosions from vacuum flasks were an ever-present risk. Everyone work- ing there suffered frequent electric shocks, and Birkeland and his assistants adopted the practice of working with one hand in their pockets so that, if they sustained a large one, it would travel own their bodies rather than across their hearts.

Birkeland's own safety precautions caused some comment among his assistants and col- leagues. On arriving in the morning, he would replace his hat with an Egyptian fez and put on a pair of red leather Egyptian slippers with long, pointed tips. To those who asked the reason for his fanciful attire, he explained that he suffered from frequent headaches caused by the harmful rays emitted by his experiments, and that the fez protected his head - but this was just to see who was gullible enough to believe it. (Yet his Egyptian accessories were not just an arbitrary affectation: Egypt was one of the best places in the world from which to obseIVe the Zodiacal Light, a phenome- non no less mysterious than the Aurora Borealis which appears in equatorial skies after sunset and which has been suggested as the natural explanation for Moses's "Pillar of Fire"; and Birkeland, who had long been fuscinated by Egyptology, would later in life spend some rime in Egypt studying dte Anrora's equatorial counterpart.) Birkeland's aim in his laboratory was, in effect, to re-create the Northern Lights. He designed the necessary instruments himself. At one end of a glass vacuum chamber he installed a cadtode, a negatively charged electrode dtat emitted a beam of high-velocity electrons or "cathode rays" when heated; in the centre was an anode to receive dte rays. The anode was in dte form of a small, magnetised metal globe, representing the Earth. Birkeland called it a "terrella". The ball was made from a thin sheet of brass covered widt a coat of barium platinocide dtat was phospho- rescent and would glow when hit by flying electrons. The magnet within was mounted slightly off vertical to imitate dte tilt of dte Earth's poles. When Birkeland turned on dte cadtode, dte electrons would stream into dte vacuum in all direc- tions, until he turned on dte magnet in dte globe.

Shortly after its completion, Birkeland found himself explaining his terrella to an impromptu audience that had gamered from all over the university. The room was crackling wim anticipation' as he explained how his vacuum chamber would show, for me first time ever, how our world reacts to unknown forces in space. After a little while the tip of me camode, me "sun", began to glow hot. Still the "Earth" lay in darkness. Once Birkeland was satisfied that electrons were streaming from me camode, he flicked me switch beside me chamber and powered me electromag- net in me terrella. Within seconds, a purple glow could be seen encircling the Earili at me equator. As Birkeland increased the strength of the mag- netic field around the Earth, the circle divided, and two circles began to move towards the poles. The audience fell silent as the two spiral rings of glowing, phosphorescent light hovered around the poles of the Earth, eerie and magical. Even the least funciful of mem must have had a fleeting moment of awe, looking at me Earth as if from space. Only Birkeland had any idea of how auro- ras could be conjured out of nothing, could glow with such lively intensity, could find meir way to me poles of me Earth, could be so beautiful.

After a few minutes Birkeland turned off the magnet and me camode, and me audience took a collective bream. Birkeland laughed at meir stunned faces. He could not have hoped for more. Wim this experiment, he was going to make his doubting dettactors sit up and acknowl- edge me value of his meories. Beyond that, he had realised during this first test how much more he had to say about me world. He no longer wanted to concentrate on me Northern Lights alone, because here was me canvas he needed to look beyond me Earili to me universe itself.

IN 1908, Birkeland published his monumental work, The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903, describing his second, bigger expedi- tion to me fur north. This extraordinary achieve- ment was breathtaking both in its exhaustive research and in its conclusions. By using his terrel- las in conjunction wim magnetic results, Birkeland had deduced that me sun must continuously emit charged particles, and he sugged that me cathode rays causing auroras were forced into space from me areas round sunspots, some being responsible for magnetic storms on Earth. "Besides making clear the origin of important terrestrial phenomena, the investigations give promise of the possibility of drawing, from me energy of me corpuscular precipitation on me Earth, well-founded conclusions regarding me conditions on me sun," he wrote. "Further researches may lead to a solu- tion of the most attractive scientific problems of our age- the origin of terrestrial magnetism and me origin of the sun's heat." Birkeland believed that the electromagnetic influence of the sun on near and distant space was as important as that of gravity. He took the laws of electric and magnetic forces and applied them to space. It was a breakthrough in the under- standing of the forces at work in me solar system. Copies of Birkeland's JOO-page book were sent to me great scientists of Europe, as well as to heads of state, but, again, it was largely ignored. Arthur Schuster, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a prominent scientist in the field of terrestrial magnetism, dismissed Birkeland's huge volume with a terse comment in the Society's Proceedings:

"Even originally well-defined pencils of cathode rays from the sun cannot reach the Earth. For Birkeland's theories to be correct, the existence of such cathode rays is clearly presupposed to be necessary... and this assumption is untenable." Birkeland was furious, for he knew that, if his theories were ever to be widely disseminated, it was necessary for the British scientific establish- ment to accept them. Over the next five years, Birkeland's life fell apart. A dispute over the design of the furnaces of a new factory more or less finished off his already frayed relationship with Eyde - whom he denounced in a letter dated 7 July 1910 for hav- ing done a deal that was "cowardly" and "without honour", As he picked up the blotter to dry the ink, he noticed a folded piece of paper under- neath it. It was a short note from Ida informing him that she was leaving him and had gone to smy with a friend. His obsession with work had been ttying her patience ever since., having narrowly avoided missing their wedding, he had taken her in lieu of a honeymoon to Notodden, where he had an urgent rendezvous with Eyde to develop their furnace. His most recent absence - for three months, to deal with the crisis over furnace design that led to his final falling-out with Eyde - had merely been the latest among many, and they had drifted hopelessly apart. While finalising the details of the divorce, Birkeland was invited by his lawyer to join a sci- entific committee whose purpose was to give an unbiased evaluation of the abilities of a famous medium, Mrs Wriedt. This brought him the sat- isfaction of exposing a fraud of which he strongly disapproved. ("We could easily enter the darkest Middle Ages if we give in to monsters such as Mrs Wriedt," he wrote.) But it also brought the mortification of learning in the process that his estranged wife had regularly attended Mrs Wriedt's seances. SpiritUalism was much in vogue at the time; but the fact that he did not know that his wife had participated in it revealed to him how little interest he had shown in her. He wished that he had declined the invitation to lead the com- mittee - it had been a sad distraction - and retreated to hiS laboratory:

Meanwhile, his work began to be overshad- owed by scientific developments elsewhere. Einstein's special theory of relativity was published in 1905 j Niels Bohr announced his modelof the atom in 1908. Although Birkeland's ideas were too far ahead of their time to be fully under- stood, they also seemed curiously old-fashioned. His work, which had once caused intense dis- agreement, was now met by a wall of indifference.

Meanwhile, his work began to be overshad- owed by scientific developments elsewhere. Einstein's special theory of relativity was pub- lished in 1905; Niels Bohr announced his model of the atom in 1908. Although Birkeland's ideas were too far ahead of their time to be fully under- stood, they also seemed curiously old-fashioned. His work, which had once caused intense dis- agreement, was now met by a wall of indifference. In the second volume of his book, Birkeland wrote: "We have arrived at results that seem to us so valuable, that they have rewarded us for the exertions and personal sacrifices that the work has cost. » He still believed this to be true, despite his poor health, broken by overwork to fund his research, his drinking, a failed marriage, his alienation from the industrial giant he had helped to create, his mother's recent death, the jealousy of his colleagues at the university and his lack of recognition abroad; He was still sure that what he had discovered justified the path he had chosen, yet he could not face another grinding winter in Christiania, tired and alone. Taking two assistants with him, he left for Egypt, where he proposed to study the Zodiacal Light. In an act of great gen- erosity that also showed that he intended to be away for several years, he donated his laboratory to the university.

IN EGYPT - where, after a period in Sudan, he settled at Helwan - Birkeland's mental and physi- cal condition deteriorated. His insomnia wors- ened, and his use of verona! and whisky increased, fuelling a growing paranoia. In February 1914, after suffering several burglaries, he bought a revolver and began to keep it under his pillow. Perhaps reminded by this of the subject of defence, he subsequently wrote two letters to members of Britain's Commission for the Examination of Inventions of War, asking if they would be interested in developing his electro- magnetic cannon. The letters emphasised the need for "absolute discretion", adding: "My name must never be used in connection with the invention." For Birkeland had begun to fear that, as military tensions grew between the major European powers, his invention could lead him into danger. The outbreak of war increased this anxiety, not least because of the inevitable inter- ruptions it caused to his correspondence with friends and colleagues overseas. The non-arrival of various expected letters fuelled his paranoia, as did the lack of a firm order for his cannon.

By 1916, Birkeland was convinced that the plans for his cannon were vulnerable to espionage and that his own safety was compromised. He installed a safe in his bedroom, carefully locking away the copies of his patents, and bought two guard dogs and two more guns. That aummn, he decided he could no longer trust his servants" and dismissed them all except the housekeeper. In November, he was cheered by a written request to demomstrate his gun from a representative of Britain's Egyptian Expeditionary Force. But aldlough he worked hard to facilitate dle devel- opment of a prototype, nothing solid ever came of it. Birkeland found himself spending all his time at home, hardly speaking to anyone and eating lime. To compensate for his lack of nour- ishment, physical and emotional, he upped his intake of whisky, coffee and veronal. On 14 December 1916, dle day after his 49dl birthday, he sent a telegram to his friend and colleague Karl Devik in Norway: "Birkeland desires Karl come to Tokyo." No further explanation was given, even dlough a rendezvous in dle Far East had never been discussed before. HBirkelandhad already decided to travel to Japan, he had not informed anybody else of his plan.

By the end of the year, he became too ill to live alone and was taken to recuperate in Cairo by his friend Dr Eriksen, the Danish consul. "Birkeland was terribly thin and worn out, very paranoid and his eyes were flickering everywhere," Eriksen's wife, Gerda, wrote later. "He was convinced dle English were after him, he claimed dleywere walk- ing around dle house, day and night, spying. He dlought dley had persuaded his housekeeper to spy as well and so he had sacked her at Christmas. He was not sleeping and the only remedy he had was half a beer of whisky and two grams ofveronal."

BIRKELAND ARRIVED in Japan on 3 April 1917, accompanied by Dr Eriksen. They planned to stay for 10 days, but Birkeland suddenly changed his mind on meeting some colleagues at me Imperial University in Tokyo, saying that he wanted to work with them for several months. One of me academics in question, Professor Terada, booked him into the Hotel Seiyoken, a small establishment annexed to a teahouse in Ueno Park. At first, Birkeland made almost daily visits to the university's physics department, where he talked with Professor Terada and worked on his own complete cosmogony. He remained lucid, but it was clear to Terada that Birkeland was not well. As he later wrote: "Birkeland was somehow melancholy and very nervous. He seemed feverish and. .. was continuously wiping away sweat from his brow."

On 15 June, Birkeland went to me telegraph office near the hotel and sent a message to his lawyer,Johan Breda!: "Remember Wriedt Com- mittee." Bredal put it to one side, puzzled. Only the following day did iG meaning become clear. Sending the telegram was Birkeland's first excursion in nearly a fortnight: he had been clos- eted in the hotel, working on his latest treatise. He had, however, asked Professor Terada to visit him one day; saying mat he had something to tell him. "He was lying on his bed in his pyjamas," Terada wrote subsequendy. "He said mat he was tired and would not like to use German or English, would I mind if he spoke French? Then he began to tell slowly the following story... Professor Birkeland invented some device for ! military purposes and had recommended its adoption to the French government. Since they declined his proposal Birkeland men went to the British government which performed testing on his invention but finally also rejected it. From that i time on he felt that. he was being followed by spies from Britain. He went to Helwan in Africa i for the purpose of research and to escape the shadow of espionage. While he was observing the Zodiacal Light one night alone in the desert, someone tried to shoot at him out of the dark- ness. After that he decided to make a sea journey to the Orient but he felt a spy was already on the ship and watching him day and night. Even after landing inJapan he felt shadowed... Only in the Seiyoken Hotel did he feel free but he said he could not be sure for how long he would be safe. After finishing the story, he closed his eyes and became silent, as if exhausted. I left his room without dismrbing him."

On the morning of 16 June, Professor Terada was summoned urgently to the Hotel Seiyoken, where Birkeland was said to be gravely ill. Terada arrived, with his colleague Professor Miura, to find a servant boy waiting for them, extremely agitated. Apparently the boy could get no response from Birkeland's room, and so he had opened the door with a spare key and seen that the professor appeared to be lifeless. When Terada and Miura entered the room, they saw Birkeland on the bed, and on the table beside him a large, flat pistol and a glass at the bottom of which was a residue of white powder.

A post-mortem revealed that Birkeland had taken 10g of veronal the night he died, instead of the O.5g recommended. The time of death was estimated at 7am.

After Birkeland's death, Johan Bredal told Olaf Devik of the strange telegram he had received from Tokyo. Bredal now realised its significance. Birkeland must have known that death was near - either he knew himself to be ill or he was convinced that spies were closing in on him- and was telling Breda! to see if a medium could contact him after death. That way, they could have conclusive proof as to whether there was any truth in the claims of spiritualists or not. Breda! and Devik subsequently attempted to make contact with Birkeland's spirit, writing to Sir Oliver Lodge - an eminent English physicist known for his efforts to reconcile the ideas of sci- ence, religion and the paranonnal- and inviting him to "ask some of the best mediums to tty to communicate with the professor, taking care to write down everything, even if not understood by them." Birkeland's spirit, however, remained silent

Birkeland's ashes were remmed to Norway and on 22 September 1919 were buried in Christ- iania, at the expense of the university but not of the state. And, for the next 50 years, his reputation sank inexorably into oblivion. Memory of him faded, as his friends aged and died, and the British- led tradition of opposition to his ideas prospered and grew. One man in particular, Sydney Chap- man, a British mathematician who became the leading scientist in the field of geomagnetism after dIe First World War, seemed to go out of his way to keep Birkeland in obscurity. "His direct observational contributions to auroral knowledge were slight, " he told a Birkeland Symposium in Sandefjord, Norway, in 1967. "The apparently unshakeable hold on Birkeland's mind of his basic but invalid conception of intense electron beams mingled error inextricably with truth. . . His breadth of mind and wide interests led him astray;"

By the time Chapman died, however, in 1970, space satellites had found incontrovertib evidence supporting Birkeland's ideas of a flow of electric particles from the sun, and it was widely acknowledged that "empty space" was not empty at all but filled with a million-degree electrified gas, hotter, thinner and faster than any wind on Earth, blowing at hundreds of kilo metres per sec- ond through the solar system (and now called the "solar wind"). Composed of an equal number of negative particles, or electrons, and positive par- ticles, mainly protons, this wind forms a neutrally charged "plasma". Birkeland had predicted a similar wind more than 60 years earlier (although the term "plasma" did not exist then and he called it "solar rays", "beams" or "pencils") when he wrote: "Small storms are almost continuously present. .. almost any time pencils of electric rays from the sun are striking the Earth."

The most striking vindication of Birkeland came in 1966, when a US Navy satellite observed magnetic disturbances on nearly every pass over the polar regions. Since then, scientists looking at the satellite data in relation to phenomena such as the Northern Lights have rediscovered Birkeland's prophetic theories. Today, his understanding that the same charged particles that caused magnetic storms also caused the auroras is fully accepted, and he is credited as the first scientist to propose an essentially correct explanation of the Aurora Borealis, supported by theoretical, obser- vational and experimental evidence. He was also the first to give a three-dimensional and global picture of the currents that give rise to polar elementary storms, now called "polar substorms".

Birkeland's wider cosmogonic theory, in which he claimed that electromagnetic forces played a role as important as gravity in near and more distant regions of space, is certainly correct, although it took decades for his assertion to be generally accepted by astrophysicists. Since the satellite revolution, scientists can see even further into space, and the physics of plasmas and elec- tromagnetic forces introduced by Birkeland has emerged from the shadows to dominate current views about the cosmic environment.

No country's armed forces ever adopted his electromagnetic cannon, but the technology has since been developed to make "railguns" (elec- tromagnetic mass accelerators) for the American Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars. And Norsk Hydro remains Norway's leading multinational enterprise, employing 38,000 people, still producing fertiliser (aldtough it has also diversified), with an annual turnover of about 12bn crowns (around £lbn). Birkeland also has a crater on the moon named after him, and there is little danger of his memory fading. Yet the tragic rejection of his theories in his lifetime probably slowed the advance of geomagnetic and auroral physics for nearly half a century. As Birkeland himself said, in 1910: "A very few lonely pioneers make their way to high places never before visited. Others follow these new paths, and sometimes the pioneers build roads so wide that the masses may follow. These pioneers create tha living conditions of mankind, and the majority are living on dteir work ".