Cockroft and Rutherford: the atom-splitters. The popular story that the atom was split in Manchester is not quite true – but it is true that much research leading to its possibility was made here. ‘Rutherford’s room’ in Manchester University was investigated as it was found that radioactivity stemming from it was having harmful effects. The chapter explores the mythical power of the word ‘atom’ in terms of Manchester’s inarguable contributions to a new scientific Enlightenment, but does so dialectically, using the word ‘atomised’ to refer to the ways in which the new science, once instrumentalised, turned people and communities into particles.
Manchester: Something rich and strange challenges us to see the quintessential post-industrial city in new ways. Bringing together twenty-three diverse writers and a wide range of photographs of Greater Manchester, it argues that how we see the city can have a powerful effect on its future – an urgent question given how quickly the urban core is being transformed. The book uses sixty different words to speak about the diversity of what we think of as Manchester – whether the chimneys of its old mills, the cobbles mostly hidden under the tarmac, the passages between terraces, or the everyday act of washing clothes in a laundrette. Unashamedly down to earth in its focus, this book makes the case for a renewed imaginative relationship that recognises and champions the fact that we’re all active in the making and unmaking of urban spaces.