PIONEER OF SCIENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 251, 22 October 1937, Page 8

PIONEER OF SCIENCE

LATE LORD RUTHERFORD DR. E. MARSDEN’S TRIBUTE EARLY WIRELESS EXPERIMENTS [ Per Press Association. ] WELLINGTON, Oct. 21. “With the passing of Lord Rutherford the world has lost a pioneer on a new frontier in science,” said Dr. E. Marsden, of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, to-day. “While I was working with him foi six years he had representatives of almost all nationalities working in his laboratory, which was the Mecca of the greatest scientific intellects, and it can truthfully be said that his students occupy high positions in practically every country of the world,” Dr. Marsden added. “To us in New Zealand, interest naturally lies in the fact that while at Canterbury College about 1893, Lord Rutherford made researches into wireless waves or, as they were then called. Hertzian waves. These experiments he afterwards continued at Cambridge and they led to the construe' tion of the first magnetic detector of wireless waves, afterwards completed and patented by Signor Marconi. Thanks to Lord Rutherford, therefore, New Zealand can justly claim the honour of being a country where some of the first experiments in wireless were carried out.”

MR SAVAGE’S TRIBUTE FOREMOST AMONG SCHOLARS “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 sixtysixth year.” said the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, in a tribute last evening to the memory of the famous scientist. “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 for many others, to pretend any 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 and watched his wonderful career overseas with interest and proud appreciation. The whole world of science and scholarship came to admire him as Lorn Rutherford, 0.M., 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 the late Lord Rutherford won a great prominence, and we all can be sure that he deserved them. His life and work should 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.”

LOSS TO WHOLE WORLD WORK INSPIRED OTHERS [ British Official Wireless.] RUGBY. Oct. 20. Eminent scientists pay the highest tribute to Lord Rutherford’s work. Sir Oliver Lodge said that his death was a terrible loss to New Zealand and the whole world. Sir Joseph Thomson, master at Trinity College, Cambridge, said that 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 is honoured there will be sadness and a sense of heavy loss. His noble contributions to knowledge have been the inspiration of innumerable workers and the foundation for a vast series of researches.” TO BE BURIED IN ABBEY FUNERAL ON MONDAY LONDON, Oct. 20. Lord Rutherford’s burial will take place in Westminster Abbey on Monday. Members of the family will visit the Abbey to-morrow to discuss the burial place. The most likely spot is in the north nave near the organ screen, where the tombs of Newton, Kelvin, Darwin and Herschel are situated. NO HEIR TO BARONY RUTHERFORD TITLE DIES Who succeeds Lord Rutherford as the second Baron Rutherford of Nelson? There was an impression that Mr James Rutherford, New Plymouth, a brother, might be the heir (states the News). So far as can be ascertained, however, the title died with the man upon whom it was conferred and Taranaki will not have a peer.

What gave rise to the impression that a brother might succeed was the knowledge that Lord Rutherford had no children living and that his only direct descendants were the four children of his daughter. In any case, however, Mr George Rutherford, Auckland, is the eldest of the brothers.

A second suggestion was that Lord Rutherford’s eldest grandson, who has taken the family name, would succeed to the title. Apparently the barony was not a title that could be transmitted through a woman, for Whitaker’s Almanack states that the first baron had no heir. Thus th« title will lapse. Appropriately enough Lord Rutherford’s daughter married, in 1921, a scientist, Mr R. H. Fowler, 0.8. E., F.R.S., who has been professor of applied mathematics at Cambridge since 1932 and is an authority on ballistics and mechanics. Mrs Fowler, who left two sons and two daughters, died in 1930, the year before her father was created a baron