A.W. BICKERTON

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1929, Page 10

A.W. BICKERTON

AN APPRECIATION

AUTHOR OF IMPACT THEORY

AN ORIGINAL WORKER

(Written for "The Post" by A. C. Gifl'ord.)

In the history of science in New Zealand Alexander William Bickerton's name will always bo an honoured one. His work in astronomy is that for which ho will bo chiefly remembered, although he was trained as an engineer and spent tho best years of his life as a Professor of Ghemistry.

Ho was a bom teacher and so, in spite of his eminent fitness for other lines of work, it is little wonder that ho was drawn into the ranks of the profession. In addition to his natural eloquence ho had a' wonderful power of presenting the- facts of' science in a. vivid, lucid, and most interesting manner. He seemed to see beneath the surface of things and to know exactly, and as it were intuitively, how atoms and molecules, or even stars and stellar systems, would behave if placed in new and strange- conditions. Ho had also a remarkable faculty for devising original apparatus and for inventing experimental illustrations of chemical and physical principles. His'• experiments wore striking and uniformly successful, and always perfectly designed to illustrate the point he was expounding. His scientific imagination was extremely powerful, but marvellously controlled. He never allowed it for ; a moment to.run-away with him. Whether ho was dealing with atoms or with stars he never thought of them as transgressing any of what wo call the laws of Nature. He never found it necessary to appeal to unknown causes acting in an unknown way. The very simplicity of his explanations sometimes stood -in their way. Scientists hesitated to believe that abstruse matters could bo so easily explained. • Bickerton seemed able to form clear mental pictures of events that no other human mind had ventured to conceive, but when he showed, in any case, that the phenomena could be accounted for by established principles of physics, others seemed to resent seeing the mystery so easily dispelled. GREAT EXTENT OF INTERESTS. There were no bounds to . his scientific interests. He was inclined to take all knowledge for his province. But he was never superficial. He went to the heart of every science and viewed it in its relations to the others. His wide interests and extensive acquirements made it difficult for him to settle down to a career which demanded close specialisation, but they fitted him" to make correlations and generalisations. It is interesting, therefore, to note that his first important research was on a correlation of heat and alweiricity. When Bickerton accepted tho Chair of Chemistry at Canterbury College in 1873, he was already over 31 years of age, having been born on 7th January, 1842. After abandoning railway engineering on account of health, he had had a very distinguished career at tho Royal School of Mines^ and the Royal College of Chemistry, and had organised, and taught, with great success, technical classes in Birmingham, Southampton, and Winchester. Before coming to New Zealand ,he had been offered an Engineering Professorship, a post as Mineral Sorter ;n the Cordilleras at £1000 a year, and Professorships in Science in Australia, Canada, and, Japan. .He roaehed Christehurcb in 1874 in time for the second term, and was most successful from th© very first. He was a splendid lecturer and his eloquence, as well as his evident delight in his subject and mastery of it, attracted eager listeners. He was , nominally Professor' of' Chemistry only, but as there was no Professor of Physics, he was unofficially responsible for it also, and regularly taught every branch. THE INSPIRATION OF A STAR. Tho appearance of. a faint point of light in the constellation Cygnus, which was detected by Schmidt of Athens on 24th November, 1876, brought about a crisis in Bickerton's scientific work which was destined to affect all the rest of his life. He was so keen to understand tho workings of Nature that it was impossible for him to refrain from inquiring into the origin of tho new star. It was clear to him at once that all suggested explanations wore absurdly-inadequate. But ho was himself peduliarly well 'fitted to solve the problem. , i He was never a mathematician, but this deficiency he had turned into a 'valuable asset, for it had led him to invent for his own use ways of arriving at mathematical results without the use of symbols. These new methods, involving the use of graphs and squared paper, he had introduced with groat j success in his technical classes in England. These methods, whose use has now become universal, were then regarded by many as dangerous innovations. In his own work he dispensed even with pencil and paper, and often, 1 in consequence, astonished his hearers. He was able to refer to his mental picture of the diagram required in any case. He kept an astonishingly firm grip on the scale of magnitudes involved in any problem. If he wanted a numerical result, he would glance . apparently into space but really at a mental picture and road oft' the result. . If this- were cheeked, by hours of calculation, his results would be found to be correct to the first one or two significant figures. COLLISIONS OF STARS. In the problem of tho origin of the New Star it was therefore quite impossible for him to accept explanations with which, others were content. Ho knew that stars were suns. He realised !• vividly tho immensities of size, mass, velocity and temperature, that that ; fact implied. Some Novae were so distant that their luminosity indicated radiation exceeding that of the suu some scores of thousands of times. He couldn't for one moment attribute such an outburst to any kind of combustion or to a cause' so utterly inadequate as a sun-spot eruption in a dead or dying sun. One, and only one, of all suggested causes, seemed competent to bring about such a transformation of energy. That.was a collision between two stars. But hitherto, though well known to be suns, stars had boon treated as mathematical points. It was always assumed that, if two should ever meet, they would coalesce into a : single body. Bickerton realised at onco that most stellar collisions must be partial or grazing ones, and that in such an encounter a Third Body must inevitably be formed. In a flash of genius ho realised the extraordinary properties of this uniquo body. Some of these he saw at onco were, exactly thoso required to account for peculiarities, already obj served in a Nova, such as its sudden I appearance, its meteoric rise, its astounding brilliancy, and its rapid but fitful decline. Other points, not yet observed, were suggested by his deductions as worth looking for in future outbursts. B;ckerton 's first paper on the subject was read before tho Philosophical Institute of Canterbury on 4th July, 1878. During the half-century since then, every successive Nova has I confirmed■■ and' emphasised his deduc-

tions. This alone 'would have been a sumeiontly exciting discovery, but Biekcrton did not pause there. He very soon realised that ho had discovered a veritable 'scientific El Dorado. Celestial,

encounters, ho saw, may bo of many different kinds and may take place between all sorts of celestial bodies or systems. Partial stellar impacts ho f'ouifd to account for Variable Stars, Double and Multiple Stars, and Planetary Nebulao as well as for Novae. A consideration of a rather more direct type of stellar encounter gave him a picture of the origin of the Solar System that fits in with modern knowledgo far more perfectly than the celebrated ncbtflar hypothesis of Laplace. Even spiral nebulae could be accounted for, and the Galaxy itself could bo seen to owe its form and structure to tho encounter and interpenetration of two cosmic systems. Bickerton's papers were received at first with great enthusiasm, and ho was elected president of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury. So intenso was the interest aroused, by his work that tho membership of the society was more than doubled during his year of office. ! SCEPTICAL SPECIALISTS. Unfortunately, the theory did not appeal immediately to tho specialists, as it wa's not exactly in' the line of work of any single one. It involved so many different sciences: dynamics, heat, chemistry, and astronomy. Timid thinkers began to fear there might bo some flaw they could not see, and in time it becamo almost fashionable for people to laugh at what they couldn't understand.

But Bickerton went calmly on, elaborating and extending bis theories and solving mystery after mystery of vth6 heavens. This will probably prove ulfci. mately to be the most valuable of all liis scientific work, but it was of course only his recreation. He continued to tench chemistry and physics with outstanding success. His students often monopolised .the University Honours, gaining oa an average, for instance, twice as "many senior scholarships as those from, all the rest of New Zealand. In 1893 and IS9-1 they gained not only all the senior university scholarships, but also all the firstclass honours. But about this /.time troubles arose. Some thought that a man who was making discoveries _ in astronomy could not at tho same timebo fulfilling all the duties of a Professor of Chemistry. The pr.otraeted inquiries that followed, although they emphasised strongly the excellence of his work for the university, seriously undermined his health,'and at last, in 1903, led to his loss of the -professorship. HIS LATER ACTIVITIES. The loss to the 'university, however, of its'first, and one of its most popular, professors was probably greater than to Bickerton himself, for .he was now enabled to give more time to astronomy. He had already published "A New Story of the Stars," "The Romance of the Earth," "The Komance of the Heavens," And "The Birth of Worlds and' Systems," besides innumerable pamphlets. Later on he published many important articles in "Knowledge,"'but it is believed that much of his work is still ..unpublished. ■ ■'„... During the last few years of his lue Professor Bickerton delivered each year a course of, lectures on the Correlation of Science before the Royal Botanic Society of London. The last of these was delivered'only-a few months ago. His indefatigable energy and buoyant enthusisam lasted throughout •his life, and in spite of every discouragement he was an optimist to the end. 'He was a delightful companion, cheerful, genial, and friendly, full of the enthusiasm for humanity and bent on,doing his utmost to secure the greatest amount of joy, ana the fullest realisation of the possibilities' of life, for all. His conversation was stimulating and inspiring. When he spoke of science he gave such vivia pictures of the inner workings of matter, that in a quarter of an hour he would suggest half a dozen different lines of research pointing the way to ■' important discoveries; when he sppke of social subjects he showed an intense realisation of the high destiny of man. His letters were, characteristic. _ In the' first sentence he would plunge into the middle of some problem in cosmogony." After half-a-dozen pregnant sentences he would end ■ abruptly, but perhaps add, before posting, some important postcript.' Until his last illness, and even during it, ho retained-all the optimism and enthusiasm of youth. He passed away peacefully in his sleep on 22nd January, a fortnight after his S7th birthday. His last days were cheered by Canterbury College conferring on him tho rare honour of Professor Emeritus, by the Government awarding him a well-earned pension, and by the'gradual recognition of the value of his work.