When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all . . . We shall have found the basis of everything – of the earth we walk on, of the air we breathe, of the sunshine, of our physical body itself, of everything in the world.
* * *
ERNEST RUTHERFORD
DEDICATION
To Beverley
For quietly inspiring, and forever encouraging
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
1. Colonial Boys
2. The World Awaits
3. ‘Rabbit from the Antipodes’
4. ‘They’ll Have Our Heads Off’
5. The Atom Smasher
6. A Benevolent Lord
7. ‘A Rare Quality of Mind’
8. String and Sealing Wax
9. A Meeting of Minds
10. The Golden Year
11. Fusion
12. Tyranny’s Dark Clouds
13. The Crown Begins to Slip
14. ‘Requiem Aeternam’
15. ‘A Show of My Own’
16. The Decisive Difference
17. ‘Shouldn’t Someone Know About This?’
18. MAUD
19. ‘Meddling Foreigner’
20. A Misguided Mission
21. Manhattan
22. ‘Death, the Shatterer of Worlds’
23. ‘We Have Killed a Beautiful Subject’
Epilogue
Photo Section
Endnotes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
PROLOGUE
South Australia, 1925
For the third time in as many decades, Ernest Rutherford sailed into the port of Adelaide while being buffeted by the gathering headwinds of imminent change. He was certainly grateful to meet land after a torrid Indian Ocean crossing. So tempestuous was the voyage from Cape Town aboard the SS Ascanius that a section of the ship’s teak railing was ripped from the deck during a south-westerly gale. It meant the physicist and his wife, Mary, had spent much of the Australia-bound leg bunkered down in their first-class cabin.
Rutherford therefore inhaled deeply on the brackish breeze that fluttered almost apologetically across Port Adelaide’s Outer Harbor as he unsteadily descended the gangplank slung from the steamer. It had not long gone nine o’clock on the morning of 3 September 1925, and he paused momentarily to ponder the changes – to the crowded passenger wharf directly in front of him; to that portion of an extraordinary life story behind him; to the mind-bending details he had unearthed about the very world around him – wrought during the thirty years since his initial visit.
Adelaide had been his first port of call after leaving New Zealand in 1895 as an unknown and uncertain science student bound for a brash adventure at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, where he had earned instant notoriety as the first scholar from such distant dominions to be admitted to the exclusive institution’s hallowed cloisters. When Rutherford had returned to Adelaide in 1914, he had come cloaked in the acclaim rightly afforded the first human to prove that an atom of matter could be divided. That accomplishment had earned the son of a peripatetic flax farmer a knighthood in his adopted English homeland, and a Nobel Prize for his pioneering exploration of the sub-atomic world. But on that occasion, when he had arrived as figurehead of a British scientific delegation, he had carried foreboding as well as fame. The political unrest boiling in Europe upon his departure that northern summer had exploded into conflict while he was at sea. It was a conflagration that would rapidly escalate into the war supposed to end all wars.
So Rutherford, who had turned fifty-four just days earlier, might have justifiably wondered what consequences would flow from his third sojourn in Adelaide in 1925, the launching point for his series of lectures to be given across Australia and in his homeland, New Zealand. Those addresses would shed light on the astounding experimental work he was overseeing in his now-fabled Cavendish Laboratory. And it was those findings that had already fundamentally changed the world’s understanding of, and relationship to, the universe’s building blocks. Rutherford’s genius had revealed to science, to everyone, the mysteries of atoms and their constituent parts. It was information that had hitherto remained unseen and unknown by humankind, and with it had come whispered warnings about the huge power these minuscule particles held and the danger that might be awoken if it were let loose.
Yet for all his insights, Ernest Rutherford did not foresee the chain reaction that would be set in motion by his Adelaide stopover. Indeed, the footfall from that early spring morning that would ultimately echo through history was muffled amid the back-slapping reverence of the local dignitaries who comprised his quayside welcoming party. Barely had Rutherford alighted upon dry land when he was ushered to a car and driven to a formal civic reception at Adelaide’s grand Town Hall.
While his wife made a head start on the couple’s planned reunion with their respective families in New Zealand that would follow the lecture tour, Rutherford was chaperoned to the mayoral gathering. Adelaide was in a celebratory mood – though not altogether in expectation of the two lectures the famous visitor was scheduled to deliver. Rather, spirits were lifted by the bud-burst of pure white almond blossoms across the suburbs and throughout their hills backdrop, confirming not only the passing of winter, but also the imminent opening of the annual Royal Adelaide Agricultural and Horticultural Show.
The Town Hall event was attended by the most eminent figures from the city’s sole university, among them Antarctic pioneer Sir Douglas Mawson, then Professor of Geology and president of South Australia’s Royal Society. Mawson’s discoveries upon earth’s last, vast unexplored continent more than a decade earlier afforded him significant renown. But now a new generation of intrepid explorers, led by Rutherford at the Cavendish, was gaining similar fame by probing sub-atomic territory that could not be seen, much less traversed.
Adelaide’s Lord Mayor, Charles Glover, could not resist the opportunity to indulge in a little cultural appropriation by decreeing that Australians might ‘advance some sort of claim to nationhood’ over Rutherford through his New Zealand pedigree. Mawson, in turn, showered praise upon the slightly self-conscious guest of honour, who responded to the rapturous applause by describing himself ‘as a comparatively insignificant unit – an atom of the universe as I am today’.1
Mawson would have none of it. ‘No-one [is] more distinguished in the realm of science today than Sir Ernest Rutherford,’ he declared. ‘In fact, I doubt there has ever been anyone more notable – he is so fundamental, so thorough and complete that his work will stand for all time.’2
But if Rutherford needed confirmation of just how fleeting eminence can be, it came when the reception concluded and he waited beneath the Town Hall’s heavy stone portico for a taxi to the South Australian Hotel, where a bundle of correspondence sent on from Cambridge awaited. As a local newspaper later revealed, ‘It was about one o’clock and hundreds of people were hurrying to lunch, unaware that they were passing one of the world’s most distinguished scientists. “If he had only been Jack Johnson, the pugilist, or a cricketer, it would require a posse of police to clear the footpath”, exclaimed an attendant at the reception to his companion.’3
Accompanying Rutherford as local liaison agent was Kerr Grant, Adelaide University’s Elder Professor of Physics. Grant well knew of Rutherford’s hectic Australian itinerary, yet he also understood how rarely such an esteemed figure set foot in his domain. Seizing his chance, the professor asked Rutherford if he would consider making an informal visit to his physics department the following day – Friday, 4 September. To his delig
ht and surprise, Rutherford agreed without hesitation.
This unexpected, unscripted engagement would reshape the future.
* * *
Such was Rutherford’s celebrity at that time that details of his landing, his welcome reception, and his inaugural lecture were recounted in studied detail by the next morning’s newspapers. Mark Oliphant found those accounts so engrossing that even the rattle and roll of his daily steam-train commute to Adelaide University was not sufficiently severe to prise his eyes from the newsprint. Oliphant habitually spent the half-hour journey from his new marital home at Glenelg thoroughly immersed in the latest international science journals, or studying textbooks that informed his work as a researcher and demonstrator in the university’s physics department. On this Friday morning, however, as spring dawned and the city readied for its showpiece annual carnival, the twenty-three-year-old’s attention was reserved exclusively for the story on Ernest Rutherford.
While his fellow travellers buzzed with chatter about the next day’s round of football matches, or craned for glimpses of the recently finished fairgrounds where the Royal Adelaide Show would come alive over the weekend, Oliphant’s interest was strictly academic. And the topic that captivated him was the man he knew well from Rutherford’s myriad published works, but whose presence he never envisaged he might one day share.
On having reached his destination at Adelaide’s railway terminus and climbed down from his carriage, Mark Oliphant neatly folded the pages of newspaper into perfectly proportioned rectangles and tucked them snugly beneath the arm of his tweed jacket. As he struck out on the gentle, ten-minute walk to the university, he carried no inkling that that ‘one day’ had dawned. And that his life would soon be irrevocably changed.
* * *
That very morning, Rutherford paid his promised visit to the physics department, then located on the ground floor of what is now Adelaide University’s Mitchell Building. Kerr Grant proudly detailed work being undertaken at the new biochemical laboratory, and showed off the dedicated physics and engineering building that was nearing completion a short walk from the current, confined physics quarters. Some students and laboratory staff who were tinkering with purpose-blown glassware and antique brass calibration tools immersed themselves in their tasks so as not to stare at the famous visitor wandering among them. Others, doubtless startled by Rutherford’s thunderous voice and booming laugh, which bounced off the worn wooden floorboards and bare stone walls, attached themselves to Kerr Grant’s tour group. The party numbered around 200 by the time it reached the new building, where Rutherford launched into an informal address that featured animated updates on the work being carried out by his ‘boys’ at the Cavendish Laboratory.
When Rutherford spoke, the excited hubbub that had built behind him during his inspection of premises old and new was stilled to silence. Even the artisans adding the finishing touches to the pristine experimental space downed tools as the famed physicist explained the latest sub-atomic secrets and how they had been revealed. He detailed how particles previously unknown to humankind were being violently collided at the Cavendish, and the resultant pieces forensically examined. The stories that Rutherford told carried his hushed audience from credulity to unshakeable belief, such was the passion and authority with which he spoke.
There was no-one, among the enthralled audience, more moved by Rutherford’s presence and propositions than the young man who stood silently on the group’s perimeter, a tall, looming presence, with a vertiginous plume of rust-coloured hair. His eyes, framed behind gold-rimmed spectacles, sparkled at each of Rutherford’s wholehearted jokes, and grew wider with every revelation of the boundaries being pushed at Cambridge.
Like that day’s eminent guest, Mark Oliphant hailed from humble origins with no ancestral connection to higher learning, and had overcome numerous obstacles to win a place at university. In the almost three years since graduating under Kerr Grant’s guidance with a first-class honours degree, he had held positions as physics department researcher and demonstrator. But as he stood impassively among the freshly installed workbenches and few pieces of scattered apparatus that Friday afternoon, Mark Oliphant was rendered as awestruck as any first-year novice.
Amid the buttoned-down sensibilities of Adelaide University in the 1920s, where students – save for the sizeable female cohort – routinely sported suits and ties, Mark Oliphant showed a free spirit. While the young man’s skill at crafting equipment and conducting experiments had won the attention of senior staff within the small physics faculty, his manner had distinctly polarised his peers. From the outset, some of his fellow students had regarded him as a high-spirited prankster. He had proven himself adept at hurling water bombs and firing ‘grape guns’ – narrow glass tubes from which the fruit could be forcibly expelled, like a blunted blow dart. In those varsity play fights, he was also known to discharge the foaming contents of a fire extinguisher on his enemies, if such a weapon was conveniently at hand. During his early student days, he had once leaped from a low-rise rooftop with only a home-made parachute to arrest his descent.
Others described Oliphant as aloof and prone to flashes of temper that would quickly subside, one fellow student claiming: ‘In the laboratory he was often bossy, abrasive and rude. He used to give orders, I thought him over confident, yet he could also be a pleasant enough chap.’4 Another, Walter Schneider, described him as a ‘big, burly, almost bearlike boy – a pleasant companion, but a loner’.5 Predominantly, Oliphant was seen by his peers as a larger-than-life figure. What was also obvious in the independently minded student was his preparedness to challenge accepted wisdom.
Yet when Sir Ernest Rutherford carried out his tour of the physics department, Mark Oliphant was rendered a mute onlooker. As Oliphant would later recall of that epochal meeting, ‘at that time, members of the University as humble as I, were not introduced to such illustrious visitors’.6
It was Rutherford’s character and conviction more than any polished presentation or rhetorical flourishes that won over Oliphant that portentous day. Indeed, during the years to follow, Oliphant learned that Rutherford’s presentations were often as likely to infuriate as illuminate. What made them resonate so clearly with those who understood his vision, however, was the unashamed love he felt for his sub-atomic subject matter.
‘Rutherford was not a good lecturer,’ Oliphant would reflect. ‘He hummed and he erred and he haa-ed, and he stood back from the blackboard and looked at it for periods of time, but there was something about him that made you feel that he cared. That this subject of physics generally, of understanding nature was something that really mattered to him. It was his life. It was inspiring in that sense.’7
That inspiration was indelibly transmuted to Mark Oliphant during that brief encounter. As Ernest Rutherford sketched a vivid word picture of his Cavendish Laboratory and the history being written within it, Oliphant found himself deeply drawn to the world of atomic investigation – a field for which Cambridge University had become internationally famous, but in which Oliphant held little direct experience at that point. He knew enough, however, to understand immediately where his destiny resided.
‘It was so inspiring to hear a man of that calibre talk when I’d been taught by . . . ordinary sort of professors who were quite good in their way but not Presidents of the Royal Society . . . the man who had unravelled the whole story of the way in which uranium changed, over time, into lead,’ Oliphant recounted years later. ‘He was so generous in giving his praise to the people who were his students, who worked with him and [were] doing the jobs, that I thought to myself then, “That’s the man I want to work with.” So from then on, my efforts were directed towards trying to get a scholarship to go to Cambridge.’8
Even though they did not exchange a word during Rutherford’s short visit, Oliphant intuitively felt their futures would become entwined. He sensed that the great physicist was someone from whom he could learn not only about science, but about the world and its vast
complexities. As Oliphant would later confirm: ‘He became a hero to me and, later on, much more than a hero. He was a man that I grew really to love . . . he was so inspiring. Wherever he was, he always was the dominant figure. Not in any sort of domineering way, but simply through sheer personality.’9
* * *
Within three years, Ernest Rutherford and Mark Oliphant would forge a partnership that transcended that of master and pupil, and, over the subsequent decade, grew more akin to that between father and son. These two men, born thirty years and 3000 kilometres apart – Rutherford on the South Island of New Zealand, Oliphant in the similarly progressive settlement of South Australia – shared more than a passion for science and a drive to unlock the deepest mysteries of nature. They were also shaped by the mutual experiences of colonial settlement, modest upbringing, rudimentary education and unfettered curiosity for their respective worlds.
There was nobody whom Ernest Rutherford came to trust more implicitly, or rely upon more completely, than Mark Oliphant. In turn, there was no-one Oliphant more unashamedly revered, or whose approbation he sought more than that of Rutherford. It was Rutherford who ignited Oliphant’s research passion when happenstance brought the pair together at Adelaide University. It was Oliphant’s vision and pragmatism that immediately endeared him to Rutherford upon their first meeting in the sanctum of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. It was Rutherford who ushered Oliphant into the hallowed ranks of nuclear physicists, and who earmarked him to continue his peerless legacy. And it was to Oliphant that Rutherford turned in his private moments of self-doubt and personal grief.
Their friendship was fundamental to the last true golden age of institutional science, when the race to crack the secrets of nuclear physics and harness their frightening force gripped the globe. That quest, of which Rutherford’s Cavendish Laboratory was the core, would ultimately yield breakthroughs unimaginable a century ago – television, computers, smartphones, wireless technology, satellite tracking, cancer treatments, medical imaging and the internet among them. It also produced an arsenal of weaponry that bears the two men’s distinct fingerprints, and which continues to cast a malevolent shadow over the planet’s very future.
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