Struggles in Research

Since the university post in plasma theory had been funded by the UKAEA, following my election to the Professorship, I felt obliged to try to solve problems associated with fusion research. From 1971 onwards my main aim was to discover why the magnetic confinement machines at Culham Laboratory so comprehensively failed to retain either their energy or plasma mass. Unless the confinement problem could be solved, it seemed that the dream of unlimited fusion power would never be realized and thus this was the central issue in fusion research.