Rutherford

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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:

“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.

“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.

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In 1919 he made one of the significant discoveries of all time: he broke up a nucleus of nitrogen by a direct hit from an alpha particle. That is, man could get inside the atomic nucleus and play with it if he could find the right projectiles. These projectiles could either be provided by radioactive atoms or by ordinary atoms speeded up by electrical machines.

The rest of that story leads to the technical and military history of our time. Rutherford himself never built the great machines which have dominated modern particle physics, though some of his pupils, notably ~~Cockcrof t~~, started them. Rutherford himself worked with bizarrely simple apparatus: but in fact he carried the use of such apparatus as far as it would go. His researches remain the last supreme single-handed achievement in fundamental physics. No one else can ever work there again — in the old Cavendish phrase — with seahng wax and string. ”

The rest of that story leads to the technical and military history of our time. Rutherford himself never built the great machines which have dominated modern particle physics, though some of his pupils, notably Cockcroft, started them. Rutherford himself worked with bizarrely simple apparatus: but in fact he carried the use of such apparatus as far as it would go. His researches remain the last supreme single-handed achievement in fundamental physics. No one else can ever work there again — in the old Cavendish phrase — with seahng wax and string. ”

~~■ One has to leave Stalin out of this comparison.~~

It was not done without noise: it was done with anger and storms—but also with an overflow of creative energy, with abundance and generosity, as though research were the easiest and most natural avocation in the world. He had deep sympathy with the creative arts, particularly literature; he read more novels than most literary people manage to do. He had no use for critics of any kind. He felt both suspicion and dislike of the people who invested scientific research or any other branch of creation with an aura of difficulty, who used long, methodological words to explain things which he did perfectly by instinct. “Those fellows,” he used to call them. “Those fellows” were the logicians, the critics, the metaphysicians. They were clever; they were usually more lucid than he was; in argument against them he often felt at a disadvantage. Yet somehow they never produced a serious piece of work, whereas he was the greatest experimental scientist of the age.

It was not done without noise: it was done with anger and ~~storms — but~~ also with an overflow of creative energy, with abundance and generosity, as though research were the easiest and most natural avocation in the world. He had deep sympathy with the creative arts, ~~par- ticularly~~ literature; he read more novels than most literary people manage to do. He had no use for critics of any kind. He felt both suspicion and dislike of the people who invested scientific research or any other branch of creation with an aura of difficulty, who used long, methodological words to explain things which he did perfectly by instinct. “Those fellows,” he used to call them. “Those fellows” were the logicians, the critics, the metaphysicians. They were clever; they were usually more lucid than he was; in argument against them he often felt at a disadvantage. Yet somehow they never produced a serious piece of work, whereas he was the greatest experimental scientist of the age.

I have heard larger claims made for him. I remember one discussion in particular, a year or two after his death, by half-a-dozen men, all of whom had international reputations in science. Darwin was there: G. I. Taylor: Fowler and some others. Was Rutherford the greatest experimental scientist since Michael Faraday? Without any doubt. Greater than Faraday? Possibly so. And then — it is interesting, as it shows the anonymous Tolstoyan nature of organized science — how many years' difference would it have made if he had never lived? How much longer before the nucleus would have been understood as we now understand it? Perhaps ten years. More likely only five.

Rutherford: Difference between revisions

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 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: &ldquo;I could do research at the North Pole,&rdquo; 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:
-&ldquo;If it had not been for them, I shouldn't have been.&rdquo; 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.
+&ldquo;If it had not been for them, I shouldn't have been.&rdquo; 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.
@@ Line 40: / Line 40: @@
 In 1919 he made one of the significant discoveries of all time: he broke up a nucleus of nitrogen by a direct hit from an alpha particle. That is, man could get inside the atomic nucleus and play with it if he could find the right projectiles. These projectiles could either be provided by radioactive atoms or by ordinary atoms speeded up by electrical machines.
-The rest of that story leads to the technical and military history of our time. Rutherford himself never built the great machines which have dominated modern particle physics, though some of his pupils, notably Cockcrof t, started them. Rutherford himself worked with bizarrely simple apparatus: but in fact he carried the use of such apparatus as far as it would go. His researches remain the last supreme single-handed achievement in fundamental physics. No one else can ever work there again — in the old Cavendish phrase — with seahng wax and string. &rdquo;
+The rest of that story leads to the technical and military history of our time. Rutherford himself never built the great machines which have dominated modern particle physics, though some of his pupils, notably Cockcroft, started them. Rutherford himself worked with bizarrely simple apparatus: but in fact he carried the use of such apparatus as far as it would go. His researches remain the last supreme single-handed achievement in fundamental physics. No one else can ever work there again — in the old Cavendish phrase — with seahng wax and string. &rdquo;
-■ One has to leave Stalin out of this comparison.
+It was not done without noise: it was done with anger and storms—but also with an overflow of creative energy, with abundance and generosity, as though research were the easiest and most natural avocation in the world. He had deep sympathy with the creative arts, particularly literature; he read more novels than most literary people manage to do. He had no use for critics of any kind. He felt both suspicion and dislike of the people who invested scientific research or any other branch of creation with an aura of difficulty, who used long, methodological words to explain things which he did perfectly by instinct. &ldquo;Those fellows,&rdquo; he used to call them. &ldquo;Those fellows&rdquo; were the logicians, the critics, the metaphysicians. They were clever; they were usually more lucid than he was; in argument against them he often felt at a disadvantage. Yet somehow they never produced a serious piece of work, whereas he was the greatest experimental scientist of the age.
-It was not done without noise: it was done with anger and storms — but also with an overflow of creative energy, with abundance and generosity, as though research were the easiest and most natural avocation in the world. He had deep sympathy with the creative arts, par- ticularly literature; he read more novels than most literary people manage to do. He had no use for critics of any kind. He felt both suspicion and dislike of the people who invested scientific research or any other branch of creation with an aura of difficulty, who used long, methodological words to explain things which he did perfectly by instinct. &ldquo;Those fellows,&rdquo; he used to call them. &ldquo;Those fellows&rdquo; were the logicians, the critics, the metaphysicians. They were clever; they were usually more lucid than he was; in argument against them he often felt at a disadvantage. Yet somehow they never produced a serious piece of work, whereas he was the greatest experimental scientist of the age.
 I have heard larger claims made for him. I remember one discussion in particular, a year or two after his death, by half-a-dozen men, all of whom had international reputations in science. Darwin was there: G. I. Taylor: Fowler and some others. Was Rutherford the greatest experimental scientist since Michael Faraday? Without any doubt. Greater than Faraday? Possibly so. And then — it is interesting, as it shows the anonymous Tolstoyan nature of organized science — how many years' difference would it have made if he had never lived? How much longer before the nucleus would have been understood as we now understand it? Perhaps ten years. More likely only five.