By this time, the UKAEA employed some 40,000 people in offices, laboratories and factories scattered around Britain. Gowing knew little about atomic energy; she once remarked that when she was appointed, she "didn't know an atom from a molecule". This was rectified, and she won the respect of Sir Christopher Hinton and Sir James Chadwick, and became friends with Nicholas Kurti, Sir Rudolf Peierls and Niels Bohr. At one point she asked Chadwick what he intended to do with all the documents in wooden filing cabinets in his attic, and he just said "burn them". Such heart-stopping moments led her to help establish the Centre for Scientific Archives in 1972.