Late Lord Rutherford

Mt Benger Mail, 27 October 1937, Page 1

Late Lord Rutherford

HIGHEST. TRIBUTES GREAT LOSS TO BRITISH SCIENCE 4 Rugby, October 20. Eminent scientists pay the highest tribute to Lord Rutherford’s work. ■Sir Oliver Lodge said his death was a terrible loss to New Zealand and the whole world. Sir Joseph Thomson, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, said his death was one of the greatest losses that had ever occurred to British science.

Sir William Bragg, president of the Royal Society, said in every place where learning was honoured there would be sadness and a sense of heavy loss. His noble contributions to knowledge had been the inspiration of innumerable workers and the foundation for a vast series of researches.

TO BE BURIED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY Lord Rutherford’s burial will take place at Westminster Abbey on October 25. PREMIER SPEAKS FOR NATION WON FAME FOR NEW ZEALAND

Wellington, October 20. “I feel sure that all the people of New Zealand will join with me in expressing regret at the death of Lord Rutherford, of Nelson, in his sixty-sixth year, ’ ’ said the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) to-day. “He was foremost among New Zealand scholars, and was not the least of the world’s leading scientists. It would be foolish of me, as it also would be for many others, to pretend any claim to a knowledge of the science in which the distinguished New Zealander won fame for himself and for his country. “We knew him first as Ernest Rutherford,” Mr Savage continued “and watched his wonderful career overseas with interest and proud appreciation. The whole world of science and scholarship came to admire him as Lord Rutherford of Nelson. New Zealand, a brilliant professor of physics at Cambridge University and a master of research in radioactivity. Many British and

foreign universities honoured him with distinctive degrees, and the British nation, through its King, conferred its highest honour —the Order of Merit. These rewards are not given lightly in the exacting sphere in which Lord Rutherford won a great promience, and we all can be sure that ho deserved them. “His life and work,” the Prime Minister concluded, “shoidd be an inspiration to New Zealanders in their quest for the best in scholarship and science. The people of New Zealand will cherish his memory and the fine record .of his achievements.”