The English novelist and physicist Charles Percy Snow (1905-1972) wrote "Strangers and Brothers," a series of novels depicting the professional and intellectual classes and detailing the struggles involved in the pursuit of ambition and the exercise of power.

On Oct. 15, 1905, C. P. Snow was born into a working-class family in Leicester. He graduated from Leicester University with a first in chemistry and a master of science degree in physics. In 1930 Snow received a doctorate in physics from Cambridge, where he remained until 1950 as a fellow and as an administrator.

Deeply involved in molecular research during the 1930s, Snow turned to writing fiction for relaxation. His first novel, Death under Sail (1932), was a detective story. His second, The Search (1934), concerning scientific research, began the novelistic exploration of the personal lives and public ambitions of the British professional and intellectual classes that later achieved its fullest expression in the novels...