Rutherford: Difference between revisions
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No one could have enjoyed himself more, either in creative work or the honors it brought him. He worked hard, but with immense gusto; he got pleasure not only from the high moments, but also from the hours of what to others would be drudgery, sitting in the dark counting the alpha particle scintillations on the screen. His insight was direct, his intuition, with one curious exception, infallible. No scientist has made fewer mistakes. In the corpus of his published work, one of the largest in scientific history, there was nothing he had to correct afterwards. By thirty he had already set going the science of nuclear physics — single-handed, as a professor on five hundred pounds a year, in the isolation of late-Victorian Montreal. By forty, now in Manchester, he had found the structure of the atom — on which all modern nuclear physics depends. | No one could have enjoyed himself more, either in creative work or the honors it brought him. He worked hard, but with immense gusto; he got pleasure not only from the high moments, but also from the hours of what to others would be drudgery, sitting in the dark counting the alpha particle scintillations on the screen. His insight was direct, his intuition, with one curious exception, infallible. No scientist has made fewer mistakes. In the corpus of his published work, one of the largest in scientific history, there was nothing he had to correct afterwards. By thirty he had already set going the science of nuclear physics — single-handed, as a professor on five hundred pounds a year, in the isolation of late-Victorian Montreal. By forty, now in Manchester, he had found the structure of the atom — on which all modern nuclear physics depends. | ||
It was an astonishing career, creatively active until the month he died. He was born very poor, as I have said. New Zealand was, in the 1880s, the most remote of provinces, but he managed to get a good education; enough of the old Scottish tradition had percolated there, and he won all the prizes. He was as original as Einstein, but unlike Einstein he did not revolt against formal instruction; he was top in classics as well as in everything else. He started research — on the subject of wireless waves — with equipment such as one might rustle up today in an African laboratory. That did not deter him: “I could do research at the North Pole,” he once proclaimed, and it was true. Then he was awarded one of the 1851 overseas scholarships (which later brought to England Florey, Oliphant, Philip Bowden, a whole series of gifted Antipodeans). In fact, he got the scholarship only because another man, placed above him, chose to get married: with the curious humility that was interwoven with his boastfulness, he was grateful all of his life. There was a proposal, when he was Lord Rutherford, President of the Royal Society, the greatest of living experimental scientists, to cut down these scholarships. Rutherford was on the committee. He was too upset to speak: at last he blurted out: | It was an astonishing career, creatively active until the month he died. He was born very poor, as I have said. New Zealand was, in the 1880s, the most remote of provinces, but he managed to get a good education; enough of the old Scottish tradition had percolated there, and he won all the prizes. He was as original as Einstein, but unlike Einstein he did not revolt against formal instruction; he was top in classics as well as in everything else. He started research — on the subject of wireless waves — with equipment such as one might rustle up today in an African laboratory. That did not deter him: “I could do research at the North Pole,” he once proclaimed, and it was true. Then he was awarded one of the 1851 overseas scholarships (which later brought to England Florey, Oliphant, Philip Bowden, a whole series of gifted Antipodeans). In fact, he got the scholarship only because another man, placed above him, chose to get married: with the curious humility that was interwoven with his boastfulness, he was grateful all of his life. There was a proposal, when he was Lord Rutherford, President of the Royal Society, the greatest of living experimental scientists, to cut down these scholarships. Rutherford was on the committee. He was too upset to speak: at last he blurted out: <i>“If it had not been for them, I shouldn't have been.”</i> That was nonsense. Nothing could have stopped him. He brought his wireless work to Cambridge, anticipated Marconi, and then dropped it because he saw a field — radioactivity — more scientifically interesting. If he had pushed on with wireless, incidentally, he couldn't have avoided becoming rich. But for that he never had time to spare. He provided for his wife and daughter, they lived in comfortable middle-class houses — and that was all. His work led directly to the atomic energy industry spending, within ten years of his death, thousands of millions of pounds. He himself never earned, or wanted to earn, more than a professor's salary — about £1,600 a year at the Cavendish in the thirties. In his will he left precisely the value of his Nobel Prize, then worth £7,000. Of the people I am writing about, he died much the poorest: even G. H. Hardy, who by Rutherford's side looked so ascetic and unworldly, happened not to be above taking an interest in his investments. | ||
“If it had not been for them, I shouldn't have been.” That was nonsense. Nothing could have stopped him. He brought his wireless work to Cambridge, anticipated Marconi, and then dropped it because he saw a field — radioactivity — more scientifically interesting. If he had pushed on with wireless, incidentally, he couldn't have avoided becoming rich. But for that he never had time to spare. He provided for his wife and daughter, they lived in comfortable middle-class houses — and that was all. His work led directly to the atomic energy industry spending, within ten years of his death, thousands of millions of pounds. He himself never earned, or wanted to earn, more than a professor's salary — about £1,600 a year at the Cavendish in the thirties. In his will he left precisely the value of his Nobel Prize, then worth £7,000. Of the people I am writing about, he died much the poorest: even G. H. Hardy, who by Rutherford's side looked so ascetic and unworldly, happened not to be above taking an interest in his investments. | |||
As soon as Rutherford got on to radioactivity, he was set on his life's work. His ideas were simple, rugged, material: he kept them so. He thought of atoms as though they were tennis balls. He discovered particles smaller than atoms, and discovered how they moved or bounced. Sometimes the particles bounced the wrong way. Then he inspected the facts and made a new but always simple picture. In that way he moved, as certainly as a sleepwalker, from unstable radioactive atoms to the discovery of the nucleus and the structure of the atom. | As soon as Rutherford got on to radioactivity, he was set on his life's work. His ideas were simple, rugged, material: he kept them so. He thought of atoms as though they were tennis balls. He discovered particles smaller than atoms, and discovered how they moved or bounced. Sometimes the particles bounced the wrong way. Then he inspected the facts and made a new but always simple picture. In that way he moved, as certainly as a sleepwalker, from unstable radioactive atoms to the discovery of the nucleus and the structure of the atom. | ||
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He was a great man, a very great man, by any standards which we can apply. He was not subtle: but he was clever as well as creatively gifted, magnanimous (within the human limits) as well as hearty. He was also superbly and magnificently vain as well as wise — the combination is commoner than we think when we are young. He enjoyed a life of miraculous success. On the whole he enjoyed his own personality. But I am sure that, even quite late in his life, he felt stabs of a sickening insecurity. | He was a great man, a very great man, by any standards which we can apply. He was not subtle: but he was clever as well as creatively gifted, magnanimous (within the human limits) as well as hearty. He was also superbly and magnificently vain as well as wise — the combination is commoner than we think when we are young. He enjoyed a life of miraculous success. On the whole he enjoyed his own personality. But I am sure that, even quite late in his life, he felt stabs of a sickening insecurity. | ||
Somewhere at the roots of that abundant and creative nature there was a painful, shrinking nerve. One has only to read his letters as a young man to discern it. There are passages of self-doubt which are not to be explained completely by a humble colonial childhood and youth. He was uncertain in secret, abnormally so for a young man of his gifts. He kept the secret as his personality flowered and hid it. But there was a mysterious diffidence behind it all. He hated the faintest suspicion of being patronized, even when he was a world figure. Archbishop Lang was once tactless enough to suggest that he supposed a famous scientist had no time for reading. Rutherford immediately felt that he was being regarded as an ignorant roughneck. He produced a formidable list of his last month's reading. Then, half innocently, half malevolently: “And what do you manage to read, your Grice?” “I am afraid,” said the Archbishop, somewhat out of his depth, “that a man in my position really doesn't have the leisure | Somewhere at the roots of that abundant and creative nature there was a painful, shrinking nerve. One has only to read his letters as a young man to discern it. There are passages of self-doubt which are not to be explained completely by a humble colonial childhood and youth. He was uncertain in secret, abnormally so for a young man of his gifts. He kept the secret as his personality flowered and hid it. But there was a mysterious diffidence behind it all. He hated the faintest suspicion of being patronized, even when he was a world figure. Archbishop Lang was once tactless enough to suggest that he supposed a famous scientist had no time for reading. Rutherford immediately felt that he was being regarded as an ignorant roughneck. He produced a formidable list of his last month's reading. Then, half innocently, half malevolently: “And what do you manage to read, your Grice?” “I am afraid,” said the Archbishop, somewhat out of his depth, “that a man in my position really doesn't have the leisure...” “Ah, yes, your Grice,” said Rutherford in triumph, “it must be a dog's life! It must be a dog's life!” | ||
Once I had an opportunity of seeing that diffidence face to face. In the autumn of 1934 I published my first novel, which was called The Search and the background of which was the scientific world. Not long after it came out, Rutherford met me in King's Parade. “What have you been doing to us, young man?” he asked vociferously. I began to describe the novel, but it was not necessary; he announced that he had read it with care. He went on to invite, or rather command, me to take a stroll with him round the Backs. Like most of my scientific friends, he was good-natured about the book, which has some descriptions of the scientific experience which are probably somewhere near the truth. He praised it. I was gratified. It was a sunny October afternoon. Suddenly he said: “I didn't like the erotic bits. I suppose it's because we belong to different generations.” | Once I had an opportunity of seeing that diffidence face to face. In the autumn of 1934 I published my first novel, which was called The Search and the background of which was the scientific world. Not long after it came out, Rutherford met me in King's Parade. “What have you been doing to us, young man?” he asked vociferously. I began to describe the novel, but it was not necessary; he announced that he had read it with care. He went on to invite, or rather command, me to take a stroll with him round the Backs. Like most of my scientific friends, he was good-natured about the book, which has some descriptions of the scientific experience which are probably somewhere near the truth. He praised it. I was gratified. It was a sunny October afternoon. Suddenly he said: “I didn't like the erotic bits. I suppose it's because we belong to different generations.” | ||
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There, science itself was the greatest single force for change. The scientists were themselves part of the deepest revolution in human affairs since the discovery of agriculture. They could accept what was happening, while other intellectuals shrank away. They not only accepted it, they rejoiced in it. It was difficult to find a scientist who did not believe that the scientific-technical-industrial revolution, accelerating under his eyes, was not doing incomparably more good than harm. This was the characteristic optimism of scientists in the twenties and thirties. Is it still? In part, I think so. But there has been a change. | There, science itself was the greatest single force for change. The scientists were themselves part of the deepest revolution in human affairs since the discovery of agriculture. They could accept what was happening, while other intellectuals shrank away. They not only accepted it, they rejoiced in it. It was difficult to find a scientist who did not believe that the scientific-technical-industrial revolution, accelerating under his eyes, was not doing incomparably more good than harm. This was the characteristic optimism of scientists in the twenties and thirties. Is it still? In part, I think so. But there has been a change. | ||
In the Hitler war, physicists became the most essential of military resources: radar, which occupied thousands of physicists on both sides, altered the shape of the war, and the nuclear bomb finished large scale “conventional” war | In the Hitler war, physicists became the most essential of military resources: radar, which occupied thousands of physicists on both sides, altered the shape of the war, and the nuclear bomb finished large scale “conventional” war forever. To an extent, it had been foreseen by the mid-thirties that if it came to war (which a good many of us expected) physicists would be called on from the start. Tizard was a close friend of Rutherford's, and kept him informed about the prospects of RDF (as radar was then called). By 1938 a number of the Cavendish physicists had been secretly indoctrinated. But no one, no one at all, had a glimmering of how, for a generation afterwards, a high percentage of all physicists in the United States, the Soviet Union, this country, would remain soldiers-not-in-uniform. Mark Oliphant said sadly, when the first atomic bomb was dropped: “This has killed a beautiful subject.” Intellectually that has turned out not to be true: but morally there is something in it. Secrecy, national demands, military influence, have sapped the moral nerve of physics. It will be a long time before the climate of Cambridge, Copenhagen, Gottingen in the twenties is restored: or before any single physicist can speak to all men with the calm authority of Einstein or Bohr. That kind of leadership has now passed to the biologists, who have so far not been so essential to governments. It will be they, I think, who are likely to throw up the great scientific spokesmen of the next decades. If someone now repeated Gorki's famous question, “Masters of culture, which side are you on?” it would probably be a biologist who spoke out for his fellow human beings. | ||
In Rutherford's scientific world, the difficult choices had not yet formed themselves. The liberal decencies were taken for granted. It was a society singularly free from class or national or racial prejudice. Rutherford called himself alternatively conservative or non-political, but the men he wanted to have jobs were those who could do physics. Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, Georg von Hevesy, Hans Geiger were men and brothers, whether they were Jews, Germans, Hungarians — men and brothers whom he would much rather have near him than the Archbishop of Canterbury or one of “those fellows” or any damned English philosopher. It was Rutherford who, after 1933, took the lead in opening English academic life to Jewish refugees. In fact, scientific society was wide open, as it may not be again for many years. There was coming and going among laboratories all over the world, including Russia. Peter Kapitsa, Rutherford's favorite pupil, contrived to be in good grace with the Soviet authorities and at the same time a star of the Cavendish. | In Rutherford's scientific world, the difficult choices had not yet formed themselves. The liberal decencies were taken for granted. It was a society singularly free from class or national or racial prejudice. Rutherford called himself alternatively conservative or non-political, but the men he wanted to have jobs were those who could do physics. Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, Georg von Hevesy, Hans Geiger were men and brothers, whether they were Jews, Germans, Hungarians — men and brothers whom he would much rather have near him than the Archbishop of Canterbury or one of “those fellows” or any damned English philosopher. It was Rutherford who, after 1933, took the lead in opening English academic life to Jewish refugees. In fact, scientific society was wide open, as it may not be again for many years. There was coming and going among laboratories all over the world, including Russia. Peter Kapitsa, Rutherford's favorite pupil, contrived to be in good grace with the Soviet authorities and at the same time a star of the Cavendish. | ||
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He had a touch of genius: in those days, before life sobered him, he had also a touch of the inspired Russian clown. He loved his own country, but he distinctly enjoyed backing both horses, working in Cambridge and taking his holidays in the Caucasus. He once asked a friend of mine if a foreigner could become an English peer; we strongly suspected that his ideal career would see him established simultaneously in the Soviet Academy of Sciences and as Rutherford's successor in the House of Lords. | He had a touch of genius: in those days, before life sobered him, he had also a touch of the inspired Russian clown. He loved his own country, but he distinctly enjoyed backing both horses, working in Cambridge and taking his holidays in the Caucasus. He once asked a friend of mine if a foreigner could become an English peer; we strongly suspected that his ideal career would see him established simultaneously in the Soviet Academy of Sciences and as Rutherford's successor in the House of Lords. | ||
At that time Kapitsa attracted a good deal of envy, partly because he could do anything with Rutherford. He called Rutherford “the Crocodile,” explaining the crocodile means “father” in Russian, which it doesn't, quite: he had Eric Gill carve a crocodile on his new laboratory. He flattered Rutherford outrageously, and Rutherford loved it. Kapitsa could be as impertinent as a Dostoevskian comedian: but he had great daring and scientific insight. He established the club named after him (which again inspired some envy) : it met every Tuesday night, in Kapitsa's rooms in Trinity, and was deliberately kept small, about thirty, apparently because Kapitsa wanted to irritate people doing physical subjects he disapproved of. We used to drink large cups of milky coffee immediately after hall (living was fairly simple, and surprisingly non-alcoholic, in scientific Cambridge), and someone gave a talk — often a dramatic one, like Chadwick | At that time Kapitsa attracted a good deal of envy, partly because he could do anything with Rutherford. He called Rutherford “the Crocodile,” explaining the crocodile means “father” in Russian, which it doesn't, quite: he had Eric Gill carve a crocodile on his new laboratory. He flattered Rutherford outrageously, and Rutherford loved it. Kapitsa could be as impertinent as a Dostoevskian comedian: but he had great daring and scientific insight. He established the club named after him (which again inspired some envy): it met every Tuesday night, in Kapitsa's rooms in Trinity, and was deliberately kept small, about thirty, apparently because Kapitsa wanted to irritate people doing physical subjects he disapproved of. We used to drink large cups of milky coffee immediately after hall (living was fairly simple, and surprisingly non-alcoholic, in scientific Cambridge), and someone gave a talk — often a dramatic one, like Chadwick's on the neutron. Several of the major discoveries of the thirties were first heard in confidence in that room. I don't think that the confidence was ever broken. | ||
I myself enjoyed the one tiny scientific triumph of my life there. At the time Kapitsa barely tolerated me, since I did spectroscopy, a subject he thought fit only for bank clerks: in fact I had never discovered why he let me join. One night I offered to give a paper outside my own subject, on nuclear spin, in which I had been getting interested: I didn't know much about it, but I reckoned that most of the Cavendish knew less. The offer was unenthusiastically accepted. I duly gave the paper. Kapitsa looked at me with his large blue eyes, with a somewhat unflattering astonishment, as at a person of low intelligence who had contrived inadvertently to say something interesting. He turned to Chadwick, and said incredulously, “Jimmy, I believe there is something in this.” | I myself enjoyed the one tiny scientific triumph of my life there. At the time Kapitsa barely tolerated me, since I did spectroscopy, a subject he thought fit only for bank clerks: in fact I had never discovered why he let me join. One night I offered to give a paper outside my own subject, on nuclear spin, in which I had been getting interested: I didn't know much about it, but I reckoned that most of the Cavendish knew less. The offer was unenthusiastically accepted. I duly gave the paper. Kapitsa looked at me with his large blue eyes, with a somewhat unflattering astonishment, as at a person of low intelligence who had contrived inadvertently to say something interesting. He turned to Chadwick, and said incredulously, “Jimmy, I believe there is something in this.” | ||