FAMOUS SCIENTIST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21759, 26 March 1934, Page 9

FAMOUS SCIENTIST

SPLITTING OF ATOMS LORD RUTHERFORD'S WORK LONDON, March 23 A crowded audience saw Lord Rutherford, the famous New Zealandborn scientist, splitting atoms in the theatre of the Royal Institution, thus publicly committing a " crime " for which medieval alchemists were burned at the stake —attempting the transmutation of elements. An apparatus of 100,000 volts was used by Lord Rutherford and his assistants to disintegrate atoms at a rate of 1000 a minute, while a s\stcm of wireless amplification enabled the audience to hear the shells " bombarding " the atoms.

Lord Rutherford, the most famous living New Zealander. was born at Nelson in 1871, and was at Nelson College and Canterbury College. His parents live in New Plymouth. He took a degree in the New Zealand University with high honours, and went to Cambridge with an 1851 Exhibition scholarship for science. He has been since 1919 the director of the Cavendish laboratory. He is world famous for research into the electron and radio activity, and has been awarded the Nobel Prize, the Rumford, Copley and Franklin medals, and honoured by the leading universities of the world. Seven years after the discovery of radio-activity Lord Rutherford was able to give, in conjunction with Soddy, the theory of spontaneous atomic disintegration which provided the complete interpretation of the known facts and the basis for all subsequent research.

This first period of Lord Rutherford's career closed" with his from Montreal for Manchester in 1907 and his reception of the Isobel Prize in 1908. He was then 37 years old, and had completed what might legitimately have been regarded as a life-work. The second period of his career was spent in Manchester between 1907 and 1919. This proved even greater than the first. While at Manchester he worked out tho nuclear theory of the atom. Once more his conceptual originality was decisive, for he had to adopt a model for the atom which could not work according to accepted mechanical principles. He proved experimentally that the atom must he a, roomy structure in which nearly all of the mass was concentrated in a tiny central nucleus. This was tho key to what is named atomic physics. In Manchester the master experimenter from New Zealand and Niels Bohr, theoretical genius from Denmark, were brought together, fn 1914 Manchester University had Lord Rutherford as professor and Bohr as lecturer in physics. Lord Rutherford had provided the model for the atom, and Bohr gave the mechanics by which it could work. Armed with the Ruther-ford-Bohr conception of the atom, physicists started a campaign, which still advances with unabated triumph, on tho investigation of matter.