The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1938. Lessons of a Life

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22376, 13 April 1938, Page 10

The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1938. Lessons of a Life

It was appropriate that the Commemoration Day address at Canterbury College should be devoted to Lord Rutherford of Nelson, the greatest figure in the history of the college, one of the supreme figures in the history of a century of science. No more appropriate speaker could have been found, for this occasion, than Rutherford’s friend and associate, the former Professor of Physics at Canterbury College, Dr. Coleridge Farr, whose tribute and estimate we are glad to report this morning. It would be idle to follow Dr. Farr in his main purpose, an account of Rutherford’s achievement, of its single-_minded steadiness of direction, of its connexion with the grand tradition of British research in physics, and of the prospects of advantage and further knowledge which it opens up. There are, however, two points upon which it may not be impertinent or superfluous to enlarge. Dr. Farr remarked upon the coincidence between Faraday’s career and Rutherford’s, that each “owed his life’s work to a “fortunate chance.” Faraday attracted the notice and favour of Davy; Rutherford obtained his chance to begin his work at Cambridge because the man to whom he was placed second was unable to accept the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship. It is difficult to believe that Rutherford would have been a lesser figure in science, if the luck that gave him this- opportunity had, instead, withheld it. It is difficult to believe that energy, industry, resolution, and intellect as they were combined in Rutherford could have been suppressed by any handicap. But it is necessary to accept the facts and their warning hint. Rutherford’s career does, indeed, trace back to the good fortune that sent him in McLaurin’s place to Cambridge; and it is impossible not to link the end with the beginning, unwise not to accept the lesson that such opportunities as scholarships afford should be liberally opened to merit, reckless to assume that great ability will prove and fulfil itself without aid and therefore to leave it unaided. Ramsay’s work was done in a cellar, with old tins and other scrap for apparatus; but such were not the conditions which produced his success, they were, the adverse conditions over which he triumphed. Society does well to admire the triumph; it does better to see that its risks and obstacles lessened. Since Rutherford was fortunately awarded the one scholarship that in his day could launch his genius oversea, others have been established; but they are still too few. If Rutherford's career is understood, its lesson and warning will be best obeyed in the establishment of a memorial scholarship such as Mr Arthur Sims projected in his recent offer; and it cannot be doubted that the Government and people of New Zealand will welcome and complete the project. The second point which Dr. Farr will, we hope, allow us to take from his address is that Rutherford’s achievement, like Faraday’s, was reached in the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. The potentialities of Faraday’s discoveries were hardly to be guessed at, when he pursued and made them; to-day, Faraday appears as the father of “ all our modem pro- “ gress.” The full implications of Rutherford’s work are uncertain; its “practical advantages “or applications" Dr. Farr finds impossible to foresee. But, he says, it would be “ but a poor “and, I hope and think, a very unsuccessful “scientific man who started out on his investi“gations with only or mainly practical aims in “view.” In another place Dr. Farr contrasted Rutherford with the old alchemists, who set themselves the problem that he solved. They did not know its real nature; he did. But this was not his only advantage: “ his motives were “ of the purest, theirs were dominated by considerations of profit.” Dr. Farr would disclaim any intention of belittling the work of researchers who are, necessarily, bent to the specific needs of industry. But he has used Rutherford’s life, justly, as a shining illustration of the paramount virtue of pure and fundamental research and of the spirit and intellect which are devoted to it. No lesson could be more necessary in a country which, like New Zealand, is beset by innumerable practical problems, has begun to call upon science to solve them, and is impatient for “results.” Inevitably the tendency has developed to thmk of science too narrowly as the servant of machines and processes. Dr. Farr has taken a fitting occasion to remind us of higher and wider conceptions of science and of the service which genius thinks its due.