ATOM-SPLITTING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23351, 17 November 1937, Page 20

ATOM-SPLITTING

EMPTY-HANDED REPORTERS A WOMAN WHO KNEW "GREATER THAN ANY ALCHEMIST" (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) ■ ' LONDON, Oct. 27. In an article in Reynolds's News Mr Tom Clarke, the well-known journalist, says that the late Lord Rutherford showed the world that the idea of changing lead into gold —as dreamed by alchemists of old —was not so fantastic as it seemed, in a scientific if not a commercial sense. "Rutherford was one of the really great men of our time. He will be remembered when many who, are front-page news to-day are forgotten." Reporters (writes Mr Clarke) went to the lectures of this modern wizard and came back in tears, asking hpw they were to make a story for popular reading out of such obscurities as " atomic nucleus," " ultimate constituents," " continuous radiations " and " ionised gas." Rutherford refused to come down to earth to help them. He had the scientist's horror of being garbled by a lay press. He saw no "sensations " in his technical work and refused to depart from the technical terminology of the laboratory. Here, in the opinion of the writer, Lord Rutherford "was wrong, as I think many leadei's of science are still wrong, in holding aloof from the man in the street and not giving simple, understandable explanations of what they are doing. After all, it is on the interest of the lay public that the finance of research really depends." FLEET STREET SCOOP

Incidentally, Reynolds was the first lay paper to break the news that Rutherford and his Cambridge assistants had discovered how to split the atom at will. A proof, of the story was handed to him at the Royal Academy banquet late on Saturday night, and he scrawled across it "This information is generally correct.—Rutherford." " It was one of the biggest scoops in the history of Fleet Street." " YOU BEAT ME WITH A WOMAN" Mr Clarke remembers Lord Rutherford as "a bluff, hearty fellow with a quite unprofessional laugh, which he released for my benefit when I tried to persuade him to come off his ' high horse.'" "Why," he roared, "you fellows would make me look silly, not because you wanted, but simply because you don't know what I'm talking about." "If I send someone who does? " I yentured. "Wait and see," he replied, not unkindly, I thought. I sent in turn three people. All returned empty-handed. It was eventually a woman who brought me a wee measure of success. She came one day for a job. I asked her what she could do. Well, she had a Cambridge science degree. That caused me to mention Rutherford. Did she know him? Yes, she had had a spell as helper in his laboratory. I told her of my difficulty in getting him to talk for popular newspaper reading, and said that if she contemplated leaving science for journalism here was her chance to open a door. She pulled off quite a nice little storv. She got through Rutherford's barrage, not only because he was naturally polite to the opposite sex, but also because he was ever loyal to those who had worked with him and ever ready to help them if he could. . . I reminded him of this incident when last I met him on the other side of the world. "Ah," he laughed. "I remember how you beat me with a woman — but she did know what she was talking about, which is what most of you journalists don't."