THE MASTER SCIENTIST.

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 18240, 14 July 1931, Page 3

THE MASTER SCIENTIST.

LORD RUTHERFORD OF NELSON PICTURES OF HIS HOME. WIFE’S DESIRE FOR QUIET. Lord Rutherford’s house and Lord Rutherford’s Avife are as nearly like most people’s preconceived idea of a great man’s home and Avife as anything avcll could be, stated the writer of a series of articles on “Wives of Great Men,” hoav appearing in a London newspaper. Think of the man who is called ‘.Britain’s master scientist,” avlio is the greatest man of bis kind in the World; to Avliorn the secrets of the atom are his most familiar knoivledge; Avhose brain holds more of the Avonders of electricity and radio activity than any brain lias ever held before. Picture to yourself the kind ot home that lie Avould love, and if you are a thoughtful person and know your great-professor type, your imagining Avill slioav something very like the tree-covered Regency house on the Cambridge “Backs,” looking undisturbed over the grass, and the river, and the Cambridge spires. Imagine also Avliat the ideal Avife of such a man Avould be: you Avill come very near to an idea of the Avoman avlio runs the house and cares for the garden, avlio helps her husband until late at night, and is rarely, rarely seen. Passion for Home. . A fair, shy Avomau, Avitli an outspoken address that is almost brusque in its lack of artificiality. She has no desire for Avhat is called “society.” “I am not a society Avoman at all,” she Avill tell you. “I go about very little. Why should I, really 1 ? I have travelled so much Avith my husband and my work and my interests are here at home.”

She has a passion for house. Years ago, when her only daughter, who is now dead, went up to Cambridge as a girl for her entrance examination to Newnham, her mother went with her, and they spent one leisurely afternoon .exploring Cambridge, which was unknown ground to them. Wandering along the grass meadows of the “Backs” they came upon an empty house. Quiet, graceful, overgrown, it hid behind its trees in a secret garden. They broke in and trespassed. Every corner of the old house and derelict garden charmed them. “This is so absolutely our house,” they told each other, “that it’s 'heart-breaking we shall never live in Cambridge. ...” They went back together to Manchester. Some years later Lord Rutherford (Sir Ernest as he then was) became the “great man” of Cambridge, with a long string of scientific titles. The Waiting Home. “I came up to Cambridge,” says Lady Rutherford, “and went straight to the house. It was still green and empty, as if it had been waiting for us .... it was like coming home.” Now she has been there 12 years, retired, active, happy. She has the clear, rosy face of a woman who spends long hours in the open air, and her delphiniums are her passion and pride. She is her husband s secretary because an ininitiate could never cope with the technical intricacies of his research, and in the long years of her marriage she has learned much. Every few years she goes back to New Zealand, where they both were born. Then back again to Cambridge, and the garden . and quietness, and the careful detail of being a great man’s wife.