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Atomic Energy is “Moonshine”: What did Rutherford Really Mean?

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Abstract

In the 1930s Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) repeatedly suggested, sometimes angrily, that the possibility of harnessing atomic energy was “moonshine.” Yet, as war approached he secretly advised the British government to “keep an eye on the matter.” I suggest that Rutherford did not really believe his “moonshine” claim but did have profound reasons for making it. If I am correct, then this casts additional light on his personality, stature, and career.

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Notes

  1. In 1918 Rutherford believed, on the basis of his satellite model of the nucleus, that the incident alpha particle expelled a proton from a nitrogen nucleus, leaving a residual carbon nucleus. Only later, in light of the cloud-chamber photographs taken by Patrick M.S. Blackett (1897–1974) in 1926, did Rutherford see that the incident alpha particle was captured by the nitrogen nucleus, leaving a residual oxygen nucleus. See Stuewer, "Rutherford's Satellite Model” (ref. 34), pp. 326–335.

References

  1. See, for example, Ronald W. Clark, The Birth of the Bomb: The Untold Story of Britain’s Part in the Weapon that Changed the World (London: Phoenix House, 1961); Lawrence Badash, Elizabeth Hodes, and Adolph Tiddens, “Nuclear Fission: Reaction to the Discovery in 1939,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 130 (1986), 196-231; Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995).

  2. George Thomson, “Preface,” in Clark, Birth of the Bomb (ref. 1), p. v.

  3. Lawrence Badash, ed., Rutherford and Boltwood: Letters on Radioactivity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 9.

  4. For example, A.S. Eve, Rutherford: Being the Life and Letters of the Rt Hon. Lord Rutherford, O.M. (Cambridge: At the University Press and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939) is one of a host of books and articles that provide both basic and extensive accounts of Rutherford’s life, career, and research accomplishments.

  5. E. Rutherford and R.K. McClung, “Energy of Röntgen and Becquerel Rays, and the Energy required to produce an Ion in Gases,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society [A] 196 (1901), 25-59, on 25, 58; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson O.M., F.R.S. Published under the Scientific Direction of Sir James Chadwick, F.R.S. Vol. 1. New Zealond-Cambridge-Montreal (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 260-295, on pp. 260, 294.

  6. E. Rutherford and F. Soddy, “Radioactive Change,” Philosophical Magazine 5 (1903), 576-591, on 587-591; reprinted in Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford (ref. 5), pp. 596-608, on pp. 605-606.

  7. Ibid, p. 590; 608.

  8. E. Rutherford, “Radioactive Processes,” Proceedings of the Physical Society of London 18 (1903), 595-597, on 597; reprinted in Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford (ref. 5), pp. 614-615, on p. 615.

  9. E. Rutherford, “Heating Effect of the Radium-Emanation,” Report of the Tenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Dunedin, 1904) (Dunedin: Published by the Association, 1905), pp. 86-91, on p. 90.

  10. Ibid., p. 91.

  11. E. Rutherford, Radio-activity (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1904), p. 338.

  12. E. Rutherford, “The Succession of Changes in Radioactive Bodies” [Bakerian Lecture], Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. [A] 204 (1904), 169-219; reprinted in Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford (ref. 5), pp. 671-722; idem, Radio-activity, Second Edition (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1905); idem, Radioactive Transformations (New Haven: Yale University Press, London: Humphrey Milford and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906).

  13. E. Rutherford, “The Radiation and Emanation of Radium” [Part I], Technics (July 1904), 11-16, on 15, 16.

  14. E. Rutherford, “Radium–the Cause of the Earth’s Heat,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 110 (December 1904-May 1905), 390-396, on 396.

  15. W.C.D. Whetham, “Matter and Electricity” [Review of books by J.J. Thomson and M. Curie and papers by P. and M. Curie and E. Rutherford and F. Soddy], The Quarterly Review 199 (1904), 100-126, on 126.

  16. Whetham to Rutherford, July 26, 1903, quoted in Eve, Rutherford (ref. 4), p. 102.

  17. Michael I. Freedman, “Frederick Soddy and the Practical Significance of Radioactive Matter.” The British Journal for the History of Science 12 (1979), 257-260, on 259; reprinted in George B. Kauffman, ed., Frederick Soddy (1877-1956): Early Pioneer in Radiochemistry (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster, Tokyo: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 171-176, on p. 173.

  18. Thaddeus J. Trenn, “The Central Role of Energy in Soddy’s Holistic and Critical Approach to Nuclear Science, Economics and Social Responsibility,” ibid., pp. 261-276, on p. 266; pp. 179-198, on p. 185 (emphasis in the original).

  19. Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 26.

  20. Ibid., p. 29.

  21. Frederick Soddy, “Some Recent Advances in Radioactivity. An account of the researches of Professor Rutherford and his co-workers at McGill University,” The Contemporary Review 83 (1903), 708-720, on 718-719.

  22. The Morning Herald [Perth, Australia] (July 25, 1904), p. 6; see also John G. Jenkin, “Frederick Soddy’s 1904 Visit to Australia and the Subsequent Soddy-Bragg Correspondence: Isolation from Without and Within,” Historical Records of Australian Science 6 (December 1985), 153-169, on 161.

  23. Fredk. Soddy, Radio-Activity: An Elementary Treatise, from the Standpoint of the Disintegration Theory (London: “The Electrician” Printing & Publishing Company, 1904), Chapter XI, pp. 165-170.

  24. Frederick Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium: Being the Substance of Six Free Popular Experimental Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, Third Edition (London: John Murray and New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), p. 238.

  25. Nobel Foundation, Nobel Lectures including Presentation Speeches and Laureates’ Biographies. Chemistry 1901-1921 (Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1966), p. 365.

  26. Frederick Soddy, Science and Life: Aberdeen Addresses (London: John Murray, 1920), p. 36.

  27. Nobel Foundation, Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1901-1921 (ref. 25), p. 123.

  28. Quoted in David Wilson, Rutherford: Simple Genius (London, Sydney, Auckland, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), p. 345.

  29. Rutherford to Boltwood, September 14, 1915, in Badash, Rutherford and Boltwood (ref. 3), pp. 311-314, on 311-312. For the Braggs in the Great War, see John Jenkin, William and Lawrence Bragg, father and son the most extraordinary collaboration in science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 17, pp. 351-397.

  30. Boltwood to Rutherford, January 18, 1916, in Badash, Rutherford and Boltwood (ref. 3), pp. 315-318, on p. 316.

  31. E. Rutherford, “Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley,” Nature 96 (1915), 33-34, on 34.

  32. Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, “The Constitution of Matter and the Evolution of the Elements,” The Popular Science Monthly 87 (1915), 105-142, on 127.

  33. Ibid., pp. 127-128.

  34. Sir E. Rutherford, “Nuclear Constitution of Atoms” [Bakerian Lecture], Proceedings of the Royal Society of London [A] 97 (1920), 374-400, on 377, 396; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson O.M., F.R.S. Published under the Scientific Direction of Sir James Chadwick, F.R.S. Vol. 3. Cambridge (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965), pp. 14-38, on pp. 17, 34; see also Roger H. Stuewer, “Rutherford’s Satellite Model of the Nucleus,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 16 (1986), 321-352, on 325.

  35. Rutherford to A. Smithells, January 26, 1922, Rutherford papers, MB1676/32, University of Canterbury Library, New Zealand.

  36. Sir Ernest Rutherford, “The Energy in the Atom: Can Man Utilize It?” Popular Science Narratives 2 (1924), 109-111, on 110.

  37. Ibid., p. 111.

  38. Sir Ernest Rutherford, James Chadwick, and C.D. Ellis, Radiations from Radioactive Substances (Cambridge: At the University Press and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930).

  39. Ibid., §32, pp. 158-163, and §123, pp. 530-536.

  40. J.D. Cockcroft and E.T.S. Walton, “Experiments with High Velocity Positive Ions. I. Further Developments in the Method of Obtaining High Velocity Positive Ions,” Proc. Roy. Soc. Lon. [A] 136 (1932), 619-630; idem, “II. The Disintegration of Elements by High Velocity Protons,” ibid. 137 (1932), 229-242; first paper reprinted in M. Stanley Livingston, ed., The Development of High-Energy Accelerators (New York: Dover, 1966), pp. 11-23.

  41. J.L. Heilbron, Ernest Rutherford and the Explosion of Atoms (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 118.

  42. Quoted in Wilson, Rutherford (ref. 28), p. 468.

  43. Quoted in Eve, Rutherford (ref. 4), p. 374 (my emphasis).

  44. A.F., “Atomic Transmutation,” Nature 132 (1933), 432-433, on 433.

  45. “Atom-Powered World Absurd, Scientists Told,” By the Associated Press, New York Herald Tribune (September 12, 1933), pp. 1, 37, on p. 1.

  46. Quoted in Charles Weiner, “Physics in the Great Depression,” Physics Today 23 (October 1970), 31-38, on 35.

  47. Quoted in Stanley A. Blumberg and Gwinn Owens, Energy and Conflict: The Life and Times of Edward Teller (New York: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1976), p. 86.

  48. Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts: Selected Recollections and Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1978), pp. 17-18.

  49. Lord Rutherford, “The Neutron and Radioactive Transformations,” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 28 (1935), 655-658, on 656-657.

  50. The Right Hon. Lord Rutherford, O.M., F.R.S., “The Transformation of Energy,” Nature 137 (1936), 135-137, on 137.

  51. Lord Rutherford, The Newer Alchemy: Based on The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture delivered at Newnham College Cambridge November 1936 (Cambridge: At the University Press and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 65.

  52. Ibid.

  53. See, for example, Badash, Hodes, and Tiddens, “Nuclear fission” (ref. 1), p. 203.

  54. E.N. da C. Andrade, “Rutherford at Manchester, 1913-14,” in J.B. Birks, ed., Rutherford at Manchester (London: Heywood and Company, 1962; New York: W.A. Benjamin, 1963), pp. 27-42, on p. 41; see also E.N. da C. Andrade, Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday and Company, 1964), pp. 210-211.

  55. Stanley L. Jaki, “The Reality Beneath: The World View of Rutherford,” in Mario Bunge and William R. Shea, ed., Rutherford and Physics at the Turn of the Century (New York: Dawson and Science History Publications, 1979), pp. 110-123, on p. 110.

  56. David Milsted, “Even geniuses make mistakes,” New Scientist 147 (August 19, 1995), pp. 49-50, on 49.

  57. Mark Oliphant, Rutherford: Recollections of the Cambridge Days (Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier, 1972), p. 138.

  58. Quoted in ibid., p. 141.

  59. Ibid., p. 141.

  60. A.S. Russell, “Lord Rutherford: Manchester, 1907-19: A Partial Portrait,” in Birks, Rutherford at Manchester (ref. 54), pp. 87-101, on pp. 90-91.

  61. Andrade, Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom (ref. 54), pp. 210-211.

  62. Heilbron, Ernest Rutherford (ref. 41), p. 100.

  63. Clark, Birth of the Bomb (ref. 1), p. 135.

  64. Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets. Vol. III. 1931-1963 (London: Collins, 1974), pp. 427-428.

  65. Commentary by Lord Hankey on The Official History of the Second World War, Grand Strategy, Volume II – Part II, HNKY 24/7A, Archives of Lord Hankey of the Chart (Maurice Hankey) (1877-1963), Churchill College, Cambridge.

  66. Oliphant, Rutherford (ref. 57), p. 138.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to John S. Rigden and Roger H. Stuewer for their encouragement, advice, and assistance over the years, and in particular for the latter’s generous attention to my present paper.

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Correspondence to John G. Jenkin.

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John G. Jenkin was born in Australia and is now an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe University in Melbourne, where he has spent most of his academic career, first in physics and then in the history of science. In 2008 he published his dual biography, William and Lawrence Bragg, father and son.

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Jenkin, J.G. Atomic Energy is “Moonshine”: What did Rutherford Really Mean?. Phys. Perspect. 13, 128–145 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-010-0038-1

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