| Rutherford Mythology
This section
started as addressing the mythology but has been expanded to include common errors, eg as
in Peerage, and claims which are suspect or worse.
Nobel
Prize Work
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It is a very common myth in New Zealand that Ernest
Rutherford received a Nobel Prize for splitting the atom. He didn`t. That work was first
done in 1917, nearly a decade after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and 15 years after he
did the main work for which he received the prize. It is a particularly difficult myth to
eradicate. It even appears in an American university text (p1010 College Physics
by Serway and Faughn 3rd Edition 1991). But we cannot blame others. Our media, and even
Prime-Ministers, have been known to repeat the myth. Ernest Rutherford was
awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the
disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances." |
Correct
Form of Address
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Sir Ernest Rutherford, when raised to the peerage,
became Lord Rutherford or Ernest Lord Rutherford. Lord Ernest Rutherford,
by which he is widely refered to in New Zealand, is incorrect. |
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Photograph of "Parents"
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This photograph, labelled as Rutherford`s parents,
has been used as such in two books in New Zealand: (Cox and Whittall, Rutherford - The
Early Years (1991) and the booklet printed for the touring Rutherford exhibition
2000-2002.) The couple in this photo are most certainly not Ernest Rutherford`s parents,
as should be obvious to anyone who has seen a photo of either parent, and are no relation
to Ernest Rutherford. After the first use I thought I had got this out of the system but
apparently not. I sure hope this photograph never again appears as such in
any other book or publication. |
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"Rutherford a thug to women"
David Bodanis, in his book E = mc2 (New York, Walker, 2000), makes the outrageous
claim that with women Rutherford "was bluff and pretty much a thug." What
twaddle. In refuting this claim I am joined by four other biographers of the period who
well know Rutherford's character.
Bodanis`s book is a fast overview of a subject. He has taken one
reminiscence, Celia Payne`s, and presumeably never saw all the evidence that, to the
contrary, Ernest Rutherford was a champion of women in science.
I think it a great shame that a popular author can, in seeking a
catchy phrase, malign someone who is worthy of better. This claim was first drawn to my
attention by a reporter who sought my reaction (which I gave emphatically together with
proof), yet the headline on the front page of the Weekend Herald (Auckland 6 Jan
2001) still read "Scientist hero a sexist thug."
The following letter was sent to, and declined by, Nature and
Physics Today.
The Editor, Physics Today, 5 Jan 2002 .
Sir,
In his recent book E = mc2, David Bodanis makes an outrageous claim
about Ernest Rutherford, that ``with women he was bluff and pretty much a thug.'' This
claim is nowhere near the truth, if not libellous.
Rutherford had an ex-schoolteacher mother, and he had six sisters
all of whom received a good education in New Zealand. Four of the ten University of New
Zealand Junior Scholarships awarded in 1889 were won by women. As a student at the
University of New Zealand's Canterbury College (1890-1894), he was brought up with women
students having the same rights as men because the college had fully accepted women as
equals from the day it opened in 1871. He tutored at least one female student, in
mathematics. His landlady, and future mother-in-law, was one of the stalwarts who ensured
New Zealand was the first country in the world to allow women the vote, in 1893, the year
that he too first appeared on the electoral roll. His wife marched with the suffragettes
in Britain before they belatedly won the vote.
His first research student was a woman, Harriet Brooks (McGill
University 1898). They remained lifelong friends, they had great respect for each other
and Rutherford wrote her obituary for Nature (17 June 1933). Rutherford had several other
women students including Fanny Gates, May Leslie and Elizabeth Karamichailova.
Bodanis has used only the reminiscence of Cecilia Payne, the only
woman in an advanced physics class at Cambridge, who took offence not only at having to
sit in the front row by herself (as the decorum of the day dictated) but also by
Rutherford opening each lecture with ``Ladies and Gentlemen''. It seems certain that Payne
misinterpreted a supportive gesture by Rutherford. At the time, lecturers at Cambridge
commonly addressed their classes as ``Gentlemen'' even when, as was often the case during
the First World War, the class was exclusively female. Thus to commence his lectures with
``Ladies and Gentlemen'' can be seen as a deliberate provocative stance in support of the
presence of women in the lecture room.
There are several examples of Rutherford's vocal support for women's
rights, including the letter to The Times (8 Dec 1920) whereby Rutherford and the
professor of chemistry encouraged their fellow academics to give full rights to women at
Cambridge University. ``...we welcome the presence of women in our laboratories ...''
Majorie Stevenson told one of us (JAC) that as a young child she had sat on Rutherford's
knee. After telling her that she was a very determined little girl he had asked her to
promise him that she would become a scientist. And she did.
It is regrettable that Bodanis, in seeking a catchy comment, maligns
a person who in fact championed women in science and in higher education.
John Campbell (author, Rutherford Scientist Supreme),
University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
j.campbell@phys.canterbury.ac.nz
Lawrence Badash (author, Rutherford entry - Dictionary of National Biography (UK)),
University of California at Santa Barbara, USA.
badash@humanitas.ucsb.edu
Marelene Rayner-Canham and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham (authors, Harriet Brooks - Pioneer
Nuclear Scientist), Memorial University, Canada.
mrcanham@swgc.mun.ca grcanham@swgc.mun.ca
Jeff Hughes (historian of the nuclear period of the Cavendish Laboratory),
Manchester University, UK.
jeff.hughes@man.ac.uk
References
Bodanis, David. E=mc2 - A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation.
Macmillian, 2000, p176.
Katherine Haramundanis (Ed). Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. CUP, 1984, p118-9.
The Times 8 Dec 1920. (This letter is reproduced in part p381-382 Rutherford
Scientist Supreme.)
Phillips, A. ``Gentlemen'' - A Newnham Anthology. CUP, 1979, p120.
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First Researches
First mentioned in Eve`s book of 1939, it is often claimed that Rutherford started
research in his fifth year (1894) at Canterbury College. This is not so. He was an
accomplished researcher by the end of his 4th year (1893), because of research needed
before sitting his MA papers. This area is well covered in Rutherford
Scientist Supreme. Rutherford left New Zealand after two years research at the
forefront of the electrical technology of the day. His brilliance as an experimentalist
was already evident.
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Wireless Signalling in New Zealand
The Rutherford-Marconi
Magnetic Detector of wireless signals.
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It is often claimed that Ernest Rutherford did
wireless signalling before he left New Zealand. He did not. The claim comes from a 1923
reminisence of the biology master at Christchurch Boy`s High School but there is no
supporting contemporary evidence and all the contemporary evidence says otherwise, as did
Ern at the end of his 3rd paper. I discuss the evidence in Rutherford
Scientist Supreme. At Canterbury Ern was determining whether or not
iron was magnetic at very high frequencies. As part of this work he developed a magnetic
detector of very fast current pulses in circuits and he did use a Hertzian Oscillator to
produce damped pulses of shorter duration than he could produce using his timing device.
It was only after he had been at Cambridge for two months (late 1895) that
he embarked on wireless signalling. The first known wireless signalling experiments in New
Zealand were those of J S S Cooper at Canterbury College in 1899. |
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Splitting
the Atom
The unofficial banner
to mark Ern`s Presidency of the BAAS meeting at Liverpool, 1923.
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There is a lot of confusion over this term.
"Splitting the nucleus" would be less confusing as "splitting the
atom" has a messy background. The atom was unknowingly split when
people first made chemical reactions (because that often involves the transfer of
electrons from one atom to another), when physicists first made electrical discharges in
gases and when scientists first demonstrated electrolysis. JJ Thomson demonstrated the
first evidence of the existence of bodies smaller than the atom when he discovered the
electron in 1896. Ernest Rutherford spent two years helping JJ with experiments on the
conduction of electricity in gas discharges so was an instant convert to bodies smaller
than atoms. By 1902 Rutherford had shown that radioactivity was atoms spontaneously
decaying into other species with the emission of particles, ie some heavy atoms split
spontaneously.
Ernest Rutherford was the first person to knowingly split the nucleus, in
1917 at Manchester University where he bombarded nitrogen with naturally occuring alpha
particles from radioactive material and observed a proton emitted with energy higher than
the alpha particle. (The nitrogen had been converted to oxygen.) The reaction is
shown on the New Zealand 7c stamp of 1971. (See this stamp under Honouring Ern.)
New Zealanders usually state that Ernest Rutherford is most well known for
splitting the atom. However they usually have in mind the 1932 event when Cockroft and
Walton, working under Rutherford`s direction, first split the nucleus by entirely
artificial means, using a particle accelerator to bombard lithium with protons thereby
producing two alpha particles.
Induced radioactivity was discovered by the Joliot-Curies who fired alpha
particles at stable nuclei. These combined to produce unstable nuclei which later decayed.
Americans, particularly near Chicago, often attribute "splitting the
atom" to Enrico Fermi and have a memorial to say so. Fermi showed that the uncharged
neutron was much more efficient at penetrating into the highly charged nucleus. In
1939 Hahn and Strassmann bombarded uranium with neutrons and the uranium nucleus split
into two roughly equal halves with the emission of several neutrons, the basis for the
chain reaction which gave rise to nuclear power and bombs.
The atom bomb should have been called the nuclear bomb, because it depends
on the rearrangement of nuclear particles. Traditional bombs could then have been called
atomic bombs as their chemical reactions depend on rearranging combinations of atoms and
ions, a process about a million times less energetic than a nuclear rearrangement. |
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The Ease with which Rutherford Obtained Scholarships
Too often people writing about Rutherford uncritically repeat a statement written about him
by early biographers who knew him in later life. But as there have been some 50 biographies since
the first, a few more well-researched ones are worthy of consultation for up-to-date knowledge.
Arthur Eve's excellent 1937 first official biography of Rutherford, states that Rutherford
"had no difficulty in obtaining scholarships and prizes." This has recently been repeated by
Cecilia Jarlskog in her paper on Rutherford's Nobel Prize (CERN Courier December 2008).
The truth is quite different.
Eve knew Rutherford from when he was a distinguished scientist until death,
and is guilty, as are so many, of projecting Rutherford's genius back into his
childhood without checking. As I am the only person to have studied Rutherford's development
in New Zealand, the details are in my book.
The essence is that Rutherford took two goes at any scholarship he ever got,
from primary school to secondary school (1885 and 1886 when, had Edward Paisley not crashed
in English, Rutherford would never have received that one), from secondary school to the
University of New Zealand (on his first attempt in 1888 he passed matriculation but not
high enough on the list for a scholarship to pay fees so he stayed an extra year at
secondary school, as many did, for another attempt in 1889), and from University to
overseas scholarship (he was ranked 2nd of the two candidates who applied for nomination
for the one biennial Exhibition of 1851 Science Scholarship available to New Zealand
graduates, but the top candidate withdrew leaving Rutherford as the only nomination for 1895).
At Canterbury College it is true that Rutherford received the undergraduate Maths
prize every year (1890-92). However, the record shows that in his first year he shared it
with Willie Marris (a classicist and later governor of Assam), and in the second and third
years he was beaten by, then equal with, Marris but it was awarded to Rutherford because
a student could only hold one scholarship and Marris also won the classics scholarship
so took that. It should not be overlooked that there were only 4 or 5 applicants each year,
only two of whom were serious.
Rutherford obtained his early prizes and scholarships through hard work and
perseverance, not natural brilliance.
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The Ship on Which the Rutherford Family Arrived in New Zealand
Arthur Eve's excellent 1937 first official biography of Rutherford, states
incorrectly that the Rutherford family arrived in New Zealand on the Phoebe Dunbar. The fact
is that the Phoebe Dunbar was built seven years after the Rutherford's arrived.
I thought I had eliminated this error but it has recently been repeated by Richard
Reeves in his biography of Rutherford A Force of Nature (Atlas Books, 2008). Biographers
should always also consult recent books which have been well researched.
The details are in my book Rutherford's Ancestors (ch 2 and p26).
The Rutherford's arrived in Nelson on the 29th of March 1843 on the ship Phoebe. In 1849
the Phoebe was wrecked on the coast of India. Her owner, Duncan Dunbar, had a replacement
ship built, the Phoebe Dunbar, which he had also named after his wife.
So biographer's beware. In Eve's first paragraph of 9 lines there are 7 errors
or points that require explanation.
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