The Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge is one of the most famous science buildings in the world. Out of it have come discoveries which have transformed the lives of all humanity: James Clerk Maxwell’s work in electromagnetism in the 19th century; the splitting of the atom by Rutherford in 1919; the building of the first particle accelerator by Walton and Cockcroft in 1932; Crick and Watson breaking the molecular code of DNA in 1953.
Yet the Cavendish in its most famous years was housed in a cramped and nondescript building in an obscure
