“A BELATED APOLOGY”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19373, 8 January 1925, Page 8

“A BELATED APOLOGY”

PROFESSOR A. W.. BICKERTON’S CAREER. THE DAILY GRAPHIC I RODS A STORY. CFeom Oub Own CokbespoiiimehtJ LONDON, December 3. The following from The Daily Graphic will interest many people in New Zealand. The headings belong to the original article. Scientific disputes ordinarily leave me cold, but there is a human story behind a cablegram received yesterday by Professor A. W. Bickerton, the aged scientist. Years ago he was denounced by New Zealand as an astronomical heretic. Yesterday’s cable was from the New Zealand Astronomical Association, telling him that they had elected him their first and only honorary member. It was a graceful, though belated, apology for a 20-year-old wrong. Professor Bickerton has at last a public acknowledgment that New Zealand was wrong and he was right. But it is a poor satisfaction for a ruined career. DISMISSED AS A FADDIST. The aged professor, now 83, told me all about it yesterday at his little fiat in Moscow Mansions, Bayswater. While a professor at Christchurch University he evolved his new theory of astronomy, which goes by the high title of “The Theory of Cosmic Impact.” At first Christchurch feted him, but when the theory failed to be accepted immediately in Europe, he became subject to a species of persecution, scorned as a faddist, a crack-brained fellow who had found a mare’s nest. Finally the University authorities delivered an ultimatum: ha must give up either his chair or his theory. He didn’t hesitate, and at 60 years of age he was deprived of his chair and turned out of the university without a pension, after 28 years’ service. LIVING ON A ZOO. Now he has convinced them. “It cost me £15,000,” the Professor told me yesterday. “I found it impossible to make money by lecturing since the word had gone abroad that I was a faddist. So I went on developing my theory and turned my house and grounds at Christchurch into a pleasure park and zoo, producing outdoor melodramas for the benefit of the public.” However, the whirligig of time brought about its revenge. A number of discoveries were made that had been anticipated by Professor Bickerton. Europe began to pay more respect to “Cosmic Impact.’’ The University Board that had him dismissed besought him to lecture. Lord Dudley took an interest in him and persuaded the New Zealand Government to pay his expenses to England to expound his theory. He lectured before the Royal Institution and other learned societies. Lord Kelvin told him that it was the most beautiful correlation of known facts he had met, and a pension of £IOO a year was got for him. That is what he has been living on, phis the help from his family and other little money he may earn. TYNDALL AND PROVIDENCE. Bickerton was one of the very first men to start popular science classes in London. His first effort was in a schoolroom in Chelsea, and, after extensive advertising, one man arrived to learn. So he went to hear the two great preachers of the day—Puncheon and Spurgeon, who seemed to have learned the art of attracting enormous congregations, and found that, to instruct the Londoner you must make your class as entertaining as a music-hall and as sensational as a circus. “I ought to have learned that from Tyndall, ' said Bickerton. “He used to teach mo at the School of Mines, in Jormyn street. How we loved Geyser Day! Ho liked to show the principles of an explosion in a practical way. One day it wouldn’t act, and there we students stood, sheltered with umbrellas to keep the water off while he climbed up to make the explosion come off.” “We must rely on Providence,” Tyndall said, “though it is a thing not always to be relied on.” As the result of it he was nearly drowned. RUTHERFORD’S TEACHER. "Huxley, too,” went on Bickerton. “He was the idol of the School of Mines. His wonderful power to draw with coloured chalks on the blackboard intrigued everyone, and they felt hurt when he rubbed them out. It was scientific vandalism,” Sir Ernest Rutherford learned the basis of his knowledge from Professor Bickerton, and it was in his laboratory that he made his first research in connection with wireless waves. Only a while ago Sir Ernest, Sh 1 William Bragg and Professor Bickerton had a little dinner party, when Bickerton explained his theory for two hours, but Sir William, after cross-examin-ing him, said it was too big a subject to be comfortably dealt with. Anyhow, New Zealand has apologised.