Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, CH, PC, FRS (/ˈtʃɑːrwɛl/ CHAR-wel; 5 April 1886 – 3 July 1957) was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II.

He carried out research in physics at the Sorbonne that confirmed theories, first put forward by Albert Einstein, on specific heats at very low temperatures.

He was known to friends as "the Prof" in reference to his position at the University of Oxford, and as "Baron Berlin" to his many detractors because of his German accent and haughty aristocratic manner.

[5] Lindemann believed that a small circle of the intelligent and the aristocratic should run the world, resulting in a peaceable and stable society, "led by supermen and served by helots.

It was no longer necessary, he wrote, to wait for 'the haphazard process of natural selection to ensure that the slow and heavy mind gravitates to the lowest form of activity.

In 1919, Lindemann was appointed professor of experimental philosophy (physics) at the University of Oxford and director of the Clarendon Laboratory, largely on the recommendation of Henry Tizard, who had been a colleague in Berlin.

Lindemann's ability to explain scientific issues concisely, and his excellent flying skills, probably impressed Churchill, who had given up trying to earn a pilot's licence because of Clementine's grave concerns.

[15] Lindemann opposed the General Strike of 1926, and mobilised the reluctant staff of the Clarendon to produce copies of Churchill's anti-strike newspaper, the British Gazette.

This brilliant young physicist, the son of Sir Charles Jackson, transferred from the Nobel prize-winning labs at Cambridge and worked on Lindemann's top-secret nuclear energy projects.

[18] He stayed in close contact with the Jacksons at Rignell Farm, who enriched a poor wartime diet with dairy products they brought into Oxford themselves.

[19] When Churchill became Prime Minister, he appointed Lindemann as the British government's leading scientific adviser, with David Bensusan-Butt as his private secretary.

S-Branch distilled thousands of sources of data into succinct charts and figures, so that the status of the nation's food supplies (for example) could be instantly evaluated.

The bar charts now on display in the Cabinet War Rooms which compare Allied shipping tonnage lost to new ships delivered each month, and those comparing bomb tonnage dropped by Germany on Britain with that dropped by the Allies on Germany each month, are testaments to both the intellectual and the psychological power of his statistical presentations.

Lindemann's statistical branch often caused tensions between government departments, but because it allowed Churchill to make quick decisions based on accurate data which directly affected the war effort, its importance should not be underestimated.

He seemed to have a poor opinion of the intellect of everyone with the exception of Lord Birkenhead, Mr Churchill and Professor Lindemann; and he had a special contempt for the bureaucrat and all his ways.

He seemed to try to give the impression of wanting to quarrel with everybody, and of preferring everyone's room to their company; but once he had accepted a man as a friend, he never failed him, and there are many of his war-time colleagues who will ever remember him with deep personal affection.

[26] It has been estimated between 1.5 and 4 million people died during the Bengal famine of 1943, despite the fact that food stocks continued to be produced and shipped out of the Indian subcontinent to Europe.

Middle class houses have too much space round them, so are bound to waste bombs" changed accepted conventions of limiting civilian casualties in wartime".

[32][33][34] Lindemann played an important part in the battle of the beams, championing countermeasures against German radio navigation devices to increase the precision of their bombing campaigns.

"[36] He mistakenly concluded that "to put a four-thousand horsepower turbine in a twenty-inch space is lunacy: it couldn't be done, Mr. Lubbock" and that at the end of the war, the committee would find that the rocket was "a mare's nest".

One day in February 1937, he learnt from Lady Elizabeth's father that, while travelling in Italy, she had fallen ill with pneumonia and died; upon the news of her death, Lindemann withdrew from his romantic pursuits and chose to spend the rest of his life alone.