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Four Great New Zealand Scientists
Keith Tonkin
2007 Gilt Edge Publishing
ISBN 978-1-877471-00-1
40 pages. Soft Cover.
Purchasing Details.
My Comments on This Book
This book covers 4 great New Zealand scientits, Ernest Rutherford (p4-11), William Pickering (p12-19), Maurice Wilkins (p20-26),
and Beatrice Tinsley (27-34).
The author is not a scientist and too often this shows. He seems to have drawn his information in most cases from just one short web-based biography.
The book was published in 2007 but does not mention my book (1999) or website (2001), the Rutherford memorials at Brightwater, Havelock, Foxhill
or Taranaki(www.rutherford.org.nz under Birthplace and Other Places).
Pickering is an excellent example of the title. However about half is not about Pickering and his work but about the space race etc.
And no mention about the Pickering memorial at Havelock (www.rutherford.org.nz under Other Places).
I think to claim Wilkins for New Zealand is excessive. He was born here to expat parents who returned to Britain when Maurice
was 6 where he had all of his schooling. He had no further connection to New Zealand and never visited again in his life.
Beatrice Tinsley was born in Britain and her family emigrated to New Zealand when she was 5, so she had all her schooling in
New Zealand, and obtained a BSc, MSc (in solid state theory), at Canterbury College. In 1963 her husband (Brian Tinsley, upper atmosphere)
moved to the University of Texas at Dallas. Beatrice enrolled for at PhD in Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, 300km away.
Errors Noted.
p 6 "It was also in this cellar that he proved that iron could be magnetised by electrical currents." No. That had been known
for some 70 years, since Ørsted's experiments of 1820.
p 6 The 1851 scholarship was available to any graduate of a university of the British Empire, including those in Britain, to study for two years
anywhere in the world.
p 7 "In New Zealand we don't have the money so we have to think." No he didn't. This is a quote from Rutherford's second period at Cavendish
(1919-1937) and New Zealand was never part of it. See www.rutherford.org.nz Miscellaneous - Rutherford Quotes for the origin.
p 7 "because he was a student". No, JJ knew how good Rutherford, who already held three degrees, was and invited him to work with him in
investigating how a perfectly good electrical insulator (a gas) could be converted into a perfectly good electrical conductor (a gas discharge).
p 7 "which he called alpha and beta rays". Rutherford had discovered these at Cambridge, not at McGill.
p 8 Rutherford had discovered low angle scattering of alphas off of gases and thin sheets of solids in McGill.
p 9 "in 1917, before the war was over, he continued his atomic experiments." True, but it was because his main war work was over and details had been
taken over by the government labs set up to do so.
p 9 "while using his own machines to again fire alphas particles at different kinds of atoms". No. He used naturally occurring alpha particles from
radioactive sources. The machines came later when he was at Cambridge.
p 10 Mostly this is wasted by the author's own views on nuclear power.
p 11 "He returned to the country of his birth whenever he could." True, but because a visit from England took some six weeks either way,
he visited on just 4 occasions. 1900 (to get married), 1905 (to show off his daughter to family), 1914 (a family visit tacked on to a visit
to Australia for a BAAS meeting, and 1925 (to visit his ailing parents and give a lecture tour. His father died in 1928).
Reviews
Not known at this stage.
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