This paper describes how the physics department of the University of Bristol grew from relative provincial obscurity to international stature. Emphasis is placed on the role of Arthur Tyndall, who as head of the department played a crucial role by attracting external funding to provide for and maintain modern laboratory facilities, through his skill in recruiting staff and his general management of resources. Such essentially entrepreneurial qualities, it is argued, were fundamental to the rapid expansion of Bristol physics and for (...) its emergence as a new centre of excellence. (shrink)

This article considers the differential absorption and integration of refugee physicists into various countries during the 1930s, and the social and intellectual factors responsible for this, focusing particularly on the social functions of the British and American university at that period, as well as continuing ideological struggles in the Soviet Union. More generally, the issue of the relative absorption of refugee physicists is used to examine the nature of the physics communities and other institutions of the host societies.