Rutherford

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The curious thing was, all he said was absolutely true. There had never been such a time. The year 1932 was the most spectacular year in the history of science. Living in Cambridge, one could not help picking up the human, as well as the intellectual, excitement in the air. James Chadwick, grey-faced after a fortnight of work with three hours' sleep a night, telling the Kapitsa Club (to which any young man was so proud to belong) how he had discovered the neutron; P. M. S. Blackett, the most handsome of men, not quite so authoritative as usual, because it seemed too good to be true, showing plates which demonstrated the existence of the positive electron; John Cockcroft, normally about as much given to emotional display as the Duke of Wellington, skimming down King's Parade and saying to anyone whose face he recognized: “We've split the atom! We've split the atom!”

It meant an intellectual climate different in kind from anything else in England at the time. The tone of science was the tone of Rutherford: magniloquently boastful — boastful because the major discoveries were being made — creatively confident, generous, argumentative, lavish, and full of hope. The tone differed from the tone of literary England as much as Rutherford's personality differed from that of T. S. Eliot. During the twenties and thirties Cambridge was the metropolis of experimental physics for the entire world. Even in the late ~~nine- teenth~~ century, during the professorships of Clerk Maxwell and J. J. Thomson, it had never quite been that. “You're always at the crest of the wave,” someone said to Rutherford. “Well, after all, I <i>made</i> the wave, didn't I?” Rutherford replied.

It meant an intellectual climate different in kind from anything else in England at the time. The tone of science was the tone of Rutherford: magniloquently boastful — boastful because the major discoveries were being made — creatively confident, generous, argumentative, lavish, and full of hope. The tone differed from the tone of literary England as much as Rutherford's personality differed from that of T. S. Eliot. During the twenties and thirties Cambridge was the metropolis of experimental physics for the entire world. Even in the late nineteenth century, during the professorships of Clerk Maxwell and J. J. Thomson, it had never quite been that. “You're always at the crest of the wave,” someone said to Rutherford. “Well, after all, I <i>made</i> the wave, didn't I?” Rutherford replied.

I remember seeing him a good many times before I first spoke to him. I was working on the periphery of physics at the time, and so didn't come directly under him. I already knew that I wanted to write novels, and that was how I should finish, and this gave me a kind of ambivalent attitude to the scientific world; but, even so, I could not avoid feeling some sort of excitement, or enhancement of interest, whenever I saw Rutherford walking down Free School Lane.

Rutherford: Difference between revisions

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 The curious thing was, all he said was absolutely true. There had never been such a time. The year 1932 was the most spectacular year in the history of science. Living in Cambridge, one could not help picking up the human, as well as the intellectual, excitement in the air. James Chadwick, grey-faced after a fortnight of work with three hours' sleep a night, telling the Kapitsa Club (to which any young man was so proud to belong) how he had discovered the neutron; P. M. S. Blackett, the most handsome of men, not quite so authoritative as usual, because it seemed too good to be true, showing plates which demonstrated the existence of the positive electron; John Cockcroft, normally about as much given to emotional display as the Duke of Wellington, skimming down King's Parade and saying to anyone whose face he recognized: &ldquo;We've split the atom! We've split the atom!&rdquo;
-It meant an intellectual climate different in kind from anything else in England at the time. The tone of science was the tone of Rutherford: magniloquently boastful — boastful because the major discoveries were being made — creatively confident, generous, argumentative, lavish, and full of hope. The tone differed from the tone of literary England as much as Rutherford's personality differed from that of T. S. Eliot. During the twenties and thirties Cambridge was the metropolis of experimental physics for the entire world. Even in the late nine- teenth century, during the professorships of Clerk Maxwell and J. J. Thomson, it had never quite been that. &ldquo;You're always at the crest of the wave,&rdquo; someone said to Rutherford. &ldquo;Well, after all, I <i>made</i> the wave, didn't I?&rdquo; Rutherford replied.
+It meant an intellectual climate different in kind from anything else in England at the time. The tone of science was the tone of Rutherford: magniloquently boastful — boastful because the major discoveries were being made — creatively confident, generous, argumentative, lavish, and full of hope. The tone differed from the tone of literary England as much as Rutherford's personality differed from that of T. S. Eliot. During the twenties and thirties Cambridge was the metropolis of experimental physics for the entire world. Even in the late nineteenth century, during the professorships of Clerk Maxwell and J. J. Thomson, it had never quite been that. &ldquo;You're always at the crest of the wave,&rdquo; someone said to Rutherford. &ldquo;Well, after all, I <i>made</i> the wave, didn't I?&rdquo; Rutherford replied.
 I remember seeing him a good many times before I first spoke to him. I was working on the periphery of physics at the time, and so didn't come directly under him. I already knew that I wanted to write novels, and that was how I should finish, and this gave me a kind of ambivalent attitude to the scientific world; but, even so, I could not avoid feeling some sort of excitement, or enhancement of interest, whenever I saw Rutherford walking down Free School Lane.