The Basis of Everything

by Andrew Ramsey

  Consequently, Cambridge in the time of Ernest Rutherford was essentially a company town – its controlling interest being held by the twenty-four constituent colleges, which wielded influence commensurate with their balance sheets.

  That power extended to remuneration, and while senior staff, including professors, mostly received inferior salaries, their pay was supplemented by lucrative college fellowships, some worth up to £250 per annum (around £30,000 today), payable for the life of an appointment. This privilege came with apartment accommodation within the relevant college.

  A token annual grant was made by the university to the Cavendish Laboratory to cover its running costs, but other expenses – including payment of workshop staff and demonstrators as well as procurement of apparatus – were dependent on the charges levied for teaching and examining. It was a system that instilled in Rutherford the parsimony that would characterise his subsequent tenure as laboratory director.

  Rutherford’s standing as a geographical and cultural outsider meant that, despite his undisputed talent, his professional future at the Cavendish was bleak. He belonged to a cohort not seen at Cambridge until 1895 – a student who had earned his undergraduate degree elsewhere. And, despite his stellar research output and close rapport with J.J. Thomson, it had become apparent that he would not be considered for a college fellowship until he had served at his adopted institution for at least four years.

  Rutherford shared his frustration at that bureaucratic encumbrance from his colleagues in a letter posted to Mary Newton’s Christchurch home in June 1898. ‘I think it would be much better for me to leave Cambridge, on account of the prejudice of the place,’ he wrote, clearly disillusioned at his inferior status. ‘I know perfectly well that if I had gone through the regular Cambridge course, and done a third of the work I have done, I would have got a Fellowship bang off.’14

  Less than three years after landing the scholarship he had believed would assure his future, Rutherford was once again considering his options. And for the first time in his academic life, an alternative opportunity came looking for him.

  By the final years of the nineteenth century, the Cavendish Laboratory had become not just the proving ground for aspiring physicists, but also the first point of inquiry for rival institutions looking to enter the race for sub-atomic secrets. So when Montreal’s McGill University – just turned seventy-five and recently in receipt of a huge bequest from tobacco baron William Macdonald to fund a lavish new physics building – was looking for a suitable figurehead, it was to J.J. Thomson they wrote for recommendations. Thomson then proffered his ideal candidate.

  ‘I have never had a student with more enthusiasm or ability for original research than Mr Rutherford,’ Thomson wrote back, ‘and I feel sure that if he were elected to the Professorship for which he is a candidate, he would establish a distinguished school of Physics at Montreal.’15

  The answer was not so straightforward for Ernest Rutherford, however. As much as he had found frustration at the impasses that Cambridge presented, he was mindful of reputation and prestige. In addition, having spent years clawing his way up New Zealand’s educational hierarchy to seize the few opportunities on offer, the prospect of renouncing the Cavendish in favour of a colonial posting seemed potentially profligate.

  When Rutherford first became aware of the impending vacancy at McGill, replacing another Cambridge alumnus, Hugh Callendar, as Professor of Experimental Physics, he was convinced that Thomson would not support him in pursuing it. And he held doubts about his own suitability for such a senior position, almost as if to dissuade himself from contemplating a shift. As he wrote to Mary Newton in April, 1898: ‘I think it is doubtful whether J.J. will want me to go for it. There would probably be big competition for it, all over England, as the average man does not mind going to Canada, though he would bar Australia.’16

  For once, however, it was a force beyond science – his pledge of marriage to Mary – that would sway him. McGill’s departmental head of physics, John Cox, and the university’s Scottish principal, William Peterson, travelled to Cambridge to interview their candidate, and confirmed that the position came with an annual salary of £500 (around £60,000 today). That would allow Rutherford not only to repay his outstanding ‘grub stake’ to his brother, but also to make good on his promise of matrimony. Mary agreed to wait until he had established himself professionally and financially in Montreal, recognising that Ernest’s work would always be the third entity in their relationship.

  If Rutherford needed further inducement to make the move, the vision that his suitors portrayed of the modern amenities awaiting him in Canada – a sharp contrast to the cramped, already dated conditions at the Cavendish – sealed the deal.

  On 5 August 1898, three years after he departed New Zealand and two months before beginning duties in Montreal, a triumphant Rutherford wrote to his future wife: ‘Rejoice my dear girl, for matrimony is looming in the distance. I am expected to do a lot of original work and to form a research school in order to knock the shine out of the Yankees.’17

  Aware that resources in the Empire’s far corners could be scarce, before his departure Rutherford arranged for small supplies of the valuable radioactive elements uranium and thorium to be transported the 4800 kilometres to Montreal. This would enable him to resume investigation immediately into the questions that had dominated his final year at Cambridge.

  What he had not planned was the collaboration he would form with an eager young assistant, who introduced himself by harshly denouncing the very theories upon which Thomson and Rutherford had built their burgeoning renown.

  4

  ‘THEY’LL HAVE OUR HEADS OFF’

  Canada, 1898 to 1907

  Rutherford eyed his junior quarry with a mixture of bristling indignation and mild shock. In light of his experiences with the Dialectic Society in Christchurch, he well understood the adversarial nature of an academic debate. He did not, however, expect to find his work and reputation facing such vehement attack from a boy who had barely started out on his research journey, and had only recently joined McGill’s rival chemistry faculty.

  Twenty-three-year-old Frederick Soddy’s repudiation of Rutherford and Thomson’s radical ‘corpuscular’ theory hung conspiratorially in the air of the Physics Building library as he argued the case in favour of ‘Chemical Evidence of the Indivisibility of the Atom’.

  At the time Rutherford was sailing for Canada in 1898, Soddy had still been completing his chemistry degree at Oxford University. Despite arriving at Montreal in late 1900, just months before he faced off against the physics professor, he knew of Rutherford’s repute from his earlier university studies. He had therefore agreed to lock horns at a debate hosted by the McGill Physical Society in late March 1901, on a subject about which he felt equally passionate. Soddy vehemently rejected the ‘plum pudding’ theory, which he likened to the ancient alchemists’ attempts at transmutation, and was not to be cowed by his formidable foe.

  The young chemistry demonstrator took the wind from Rutherford’s usually billowing sails by questioning whether electrically charged ‘corpuscles’ actually constituted matter as chemical science understood it. He also ridiculed the notion that particles could flow from one entity to another in the sub-atomic world as an ‘ancient get-rich gimmick foisted upon science’. Rutherford became visibly riled as Soddy continued his attack.

  If as appears the case, radiant matter has lost almost all its ordinary distinguishing properties and appears hardly differentiated from electrical energy, I think the onus of proving that is really a form of matter rests on the new school. And until it is shown that it is affected by gravity, or otherwise possesses features distinct from the ether, there will be no necessity for chemists to modify the Atomic Theory . . .1

  Launching into his rebuttal, Rutherford initially struggled to retain civility. The day before, he had written to Thomson at Cambridge, chortling: ‘Your corpuscular theory seems to take the field in Physics at presen
t . . . We are having a great discussion on the subject tomorrow in our local “Physical Society” when we hope to demolish the Chemists.’2

  All hints of that hubris had now vanished, as Rutherford blustered in righteous defence of his mentor’s thesis. He pointed out that ‘considerable evidence has been obtained of the production, under various conditions, of bodies which behave as if their mass was only a small fraction of the mass of the chemical atom’.3

  So intense was the debate that it continued into the following week’s meeting. The professor presented his young doubter with a retinue of evidence to substantiate his contention, much of which he had gathered or witnessed at the Cavendish. He also acknowledged the validity of some points Soddy had raised, which helped to soften his initial criticism.

  Rutherford’s comparative seniority ultimately held sway, and Soddy conceded he might have over-reached. Yet the professor was impressed by his interrogator’s inquiring mind, and the conviction with which he presented his views. He began to regard the young man as more an equal than a rival. Soddy, in turn, came to share Rutherford’s vision, and was soon enlisted to work in the physics department, helping to track and measure the speed and mass of ‘emanations’ given off by the radioactive element thorium. It was there that he became a card-carrying devotee.

  ‘I came fully under the influence of his magnetic, energetic and forceful personality,’ he would recall of working alongside Rutherford. ‘Which, at a later date, was to cast its spell over the whole scientific world.’4

  * * *

  McGill might have received its Royal Charter to operate as a university in 1821, but its growth into a diverse, modern educational institution did not begin until decades later, when some of Canada’s wealthiest citizens were recruited to bankroll a major building program. The physics edifice to which William Macdonald had put his money and name was of Richardsonian Romanesque influence and had been completed five years before Rutherford’s arrival. It featured a distinctive tower that dominated its north-west corner, and the curved portico marking the main entrance was supported by two sturdy columns respectively labelled ‘Power’ and ‘Knowledge’.

  While it was similar to the Cavendish, in that it had been purpose-built and therefore contained no iron or steel – even in the heating system – to minimise magnetic interference, it boasted space that Cambridge simply could not spare. Inscribed above the expansive entrance hall’s large fireplace was the motto ‘Prove All Things’, and McGill’s new professor of physics quickly surmised that this was a place where he could happily attempt to live that creed.

  Rutherford had written approvingly to Mary soon after he completed a torrid sea journey from Liverpool plagued by thick smoke and fog during its final leg along the St Lawrence River.

  I am very pleased with the Physics Building which is very large and fine, six storeys or rather seven, and filled with apparatus. Everything is very bright and polished, in fact almost too much so for a building where work is to be done . . . The Physical Laboratory is one of the best buildings of its kind in the world and has a magnificent supply of apparatus that alone cost £25,000 [around £3 million today].5

  The modernity of the facilities and fixtures in the new laboratory was undoubtedly an eye-opening improvement on the gloomy, dank workspaces of the Cavendish. Yet the sparsely populated department that Rutherford was to oversee reminded him of his student days in Christchurch. At the time of his arrival at Montreal in late 1898, physics at McGill comprised two professors, of whom he was one, and a scattering of junior instructors and research students.

  The resemblance to his homeland extended to Montreal’s colonial ambience, and the heavily wooded environs of the city. In warning Mary that the winter weather could be numbingly cold, he assured his wife-to-be that it was a ‘very fine place’ even amid its bright, frosty chill, and that ‘Living, I should imagine, is much the same as in New Zealand.’6

  However, an obvious difference that Rutherford soon discovered, to his chagrin, was the exorbitant cost of accommodation. He eventually settled on lodgings in McGill College Avenue in downtown Montreal, a short walk from the Physics Building, but the expense thus incurred would carry ramifications for his short-term plans.

  In customary fashion, he found solace in a gruelling work regime that meant he often laboured in the McGill laboratory until 11pm or midnight, five nights out of seven. Among his few leisure activities during the warmer weather were cycling forays into the Quebec countryside, occasional rounds of golf and even more irregular games of tennis. His first experience of an arctic winter put paid to those activities, and instead he found distraction by taking the three-kilometre walk across the frozen St Lawrence River, during which he became fascinated by the sight of huge ice floes, and the way they were carved into blocks, to be used as a refrigerant in Canadian households when the spring thaw arrived, or exported to the West Indies.

  * * *

  For all the accolades and testimonials he took with him to Montreal, Rutherford initially found himself in the shadow of the man he had replaced as Professor of Experimental Physics, Hugh Callendar. His feelings were laid bare in a letter to Mary Newton shortly after his arrival at McGill:

  I am getting rather tired of people telling me what a great man Callendar was, but I always have the sense to agree. As a matter of fact, I don’t quite class myself in the same order as Callendar, who was more an engineering type than a physicist, and who took more pride in making a piece of apparatus than in discovering a new scientific truth – but this between ourselves.7

  It was through the hours and the energy that Rutherford invested in his laboratory work, and the fundamental importance of the discoveries he made, that he soon established himself as not only a talismanic figure for McGill, but one of the world’s foremost experimental physicists – with his partner in discovery, Frederick Soddy, closely alongside.

  Through his work at Cambridge, examining the properties of Becquerel’s mysterious x-rays, Rutherford had already identified two little-understood forces that each betrayed different properties. By employing an electrometer to measure the current of the rays being given off by these forces, Rutherford confirmed they were not homogeneous, and accordingly he assigned them distinctive names. Those that were easily absorbed by aluminium sheets placed over the radioactive source he named ‘alpha rays’. The ones that showed greater penetrative capabilities when subjected to similar tests became ‘beta rays’.

  In later examinations in 1902, Rutherford and Soddy would famously discover that the ‘alpha’ emanations were ionised helium atoms shot out by naturally occurring radioactive elements, such as radium and the thorium that he had shipped to Montreal. The altogether different ‘beta’ rays comprised high-speed electrons. A third form of emanations had already been identified, in 1900, by French physicist Paul Villard, and were later named ‘gamma’ rays, but his discovery of a radiation source that carried no electrical charge and could not be bent by magnetic forces went largely unnoticed at first.

  That was likely due to the excitement being created by Rutherford and Soddy, whose work hinted, for the first time, at the extraordinary premise that the disintegration of matter was taking place from within the atomic structure, rather than through molecular interaction with outside forces or materials. In line with the beliefs he had espoused at the Physical Society debate, there were times when Soddy was more shaken than spellbound.

  One of the pair’s most stunning early findings arose from the study of thorium samples conducted in 1902, when they found that the material being emitted showed no evidence of activity – not even when it was bombarded by some of the strongest available laboratory reagents, including platinum, zinc and magnesium, some of which were super-heated. This led them to deduce that what was emanating from thorium – a silvery-black metal that had become the second element (after uranium) to be identified as radioactive – was an inert gas. It was similar, therefore, to the colourless, odourless, non-flammable, non-toxic argon, which had bee
n successfully separated from samples of air by Scottish chemist William Ramsay in 1894. Soddy would later work with Ramsay at University College London.

  However, argon was known to be a unique chemical element. So if the conclusions that Rutherford and Soddy reached as they hunched over their ornately precise brass, wooden and hand-blown glass equipment were correct, the process they were witnessing was thorium naturally turning into matter of an altogether different structure. This was the very outcome sought by ‘chemists’ for centuries – albeit with the aim of transforming otherwise worthless substances into those of infinitely greater value: the very concept against which Soddy had argued so vehemently.

  ‘Rutherford, this is transmutation,’ he stammered as the pair stood in the laboratory, transfixed by, and disbelieving of, what they saw. ‘The thorium is disintegrating and transmuting itself into argon gas.’

  ‘For Mike’s sake Soddy, don’t call it transmutation,’ Rutherford roared with a laugh, already aware of the controversy this discovery would unleash among their peers. ‘They’ll have our heads off as alchemists . . . make it transformation.’8

  Word of what was being investigated in the physics department began to percolate through McGill, even before it was announced to the wider scientific world, and it left a number of Rutherford’s colleagues distinctly uneasy. Such tinkering with the laws of the universe, as they had been set out by Newton, seemed certain to be a source of acute embarrassment for such a young institution beginning to build its global brand.

  At a meeting of the McGill Physical Society later in 1902, Rutherford was counselled to cool his heels and delay any publication of his findings in reputable scientific journals. But the professor subsequently found a supporter in the head of department, John Cox, who had interviewed him at Cambridge. Cox suggested that, rather than dishonouring McGill’s standing as a serious player in the global physics marketplace, Rutherford’s pioneering work on radioactivity might just enhance it. This was, as it turned out, a prudent lesson in the power of self-promotion.