Characters in Rutherford's life
Arthur Stewart Eve
(1862-1948)
Arthur Stewart Eve, known as "Stewie", was a colleague of Ernest Rutherford in Montreal . He remained his friend until the latter's death and became his official biographer, under the supervision of Lady Rutherford , the widow of the father of nuclear physics.
Pictures:
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AS Eve circa 1913, source: " My Dear Eve ...," 1912–1914 , Montague Cohen
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Macdonald Physics Building team in 1904
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Biography of Ernest Rutherford by AS Eve (personal photo)
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AS Eve in 1937 . Source: Royal Society
In January 1903, Rutherford, who had been stationed in Montreal for a little over 4 years, received a visit from an English physicist in his forties, recently hired by McGill University as a lecturer.
His name was Arthur Stewart Eve, but he was more commonly referred to by the nickname Stewie.
He expressed to Ernest Rutherford his ardent wish to participate in his work, if possible from the begining of the next academic year, in October 1903.
At that time, Ernest was more used to supervising young PhD students. Of course, he also began to attract foreign researchers: that year his team included a Pole, Tadeusz Godlewski, two Germans, Otto Hahn and Max Levin, and a young American from Yale, named Howard Bronson.
He was, however, astonished to arouse the same enthusiasm in a man nearly ten years his senior, who already had many years of teaching behind him.
Eventually he realized that this was simply proof of his growing reputation.
And he accepted Stewie's proposal, put in confidence by the Englishman's affable face.
Research group, Montreal , 1905–1906.
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Last row:
G. Dunn, R. Lawrence, Gordon, L. Levi, RW Boyle.
Middle row:
RK McClung, Otto Hahn , Arthur Stewart Eve .
First row :
Mr. Levin, HT Barnes, John Cox, Ernest Rutherford.
Credit: Chadwick, 1962, 1 (in The collected papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson, volume I , facing page 832)
The collaboration between the two men would be very fruitful, since Rutherford could really rely on Stewie, who had an experience that the young recruits of the McGill physics department did not have.
In addition, Arthur Eve was endowed with an intuition quite similar to that of his boss. The capricious electroscope episode is one example.
But the ties between Rutherford and Eve were not to remain only professional: they worked together for only four years but remained friends all their lives.
When Ernest left Montreal for Manchester in 1907, it was Stewie that he asked to manage his Canadian affairs.
When he wanted to resell a piece of land he had bought west of Mount Royal, he asked Stewie to take care of it.
When the land finally got a buyer, it was actually ... Stewie himself.
When Stewie's wife Lizzie gave birth to their second child at the end of 1908, it was Rutherford that his friend asked to be the godfather, while the godmother was Harriet Brooks, Ernest's former assistant to Montreal .... and Lizzie Eve's sister.
When the International Commission on the Standard for Radium was formed in Brussels in 1910, Arthur Stewart Eve was chosen to represent Canada, while Rutherford chaired the commission.
And over the years, dozens of letters were exchanged between the two men.
Finally, when Rutherford died in 1937, it was Arthur Stewart Eve who was chosen by May , Ernest's widow, to write his biography.
To carry out this mission, he uses, among other sources, the correspondence of his late friend and in particular letters to his mother, Martha Rutherford or to May; as well as various letters exchanged with colleagues around the world. Finally, the most astonishing is that in the biography of Ernest Rutherford written by his friend Arthur Stewart Eve does not appear any letter from one to the other. There are indeed the responses from Eve, received by Rutherford and kept in the archives of her last place of work, the University of Cambridge. But no trace of the letters Arthur Eve received in Montreal.
Too much shyness on Stewie's part? Or a burst of modesty that prompts him not to want to appear in these pages devoted to a man he admired?
In reality, neither of these assumptions is correct; because the reality is much more trivial: in 1935, Arthur Stewart Eve retired and left Canada to return to England, his country of origin; in 1948, he died.
In 1982, the physics lab where Rutherford and Eve had worked together was converted to become one of the campus libraries. In the drawers of old furniture intended for disposal were numerous letters: addressed to Arthur Stewart Eve, they were signed, among others, William Henry Bragg , Frederick Soddy, Otto Hahn or ... Ernest Rutherford. If Stewie hadn't been able to use the information contained in the letters his friend had written him, it was simply because he had forgotten them behind him when he left Canada.
All of this correspondence was collected and richly annotated by Montague Cohen, then, after his death, by AJ Hobbins, two researchers from Montreal. It is a mine of information and it is in particular in these documents that I obtained all the details of Ernest and May's trip to Stockholm in December 1908, for the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry . A resource that was invaluable to me for writing this episode, included in the second volume of my novel.
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Sources :
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The collected papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson, volume I, face à la page 832
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My Dear Eve... The Letters of Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Eve, 1907–1908, Montague Cohen
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My Dear Eve... The Letters of Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Eve, Part II, 1909–1911, Montague Cohen
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My Dear Eve..., The Letters of Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Eve, Part III, 1912–1914, Montague Cohen
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My Dear Eve..., The Letters of Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Stewart Eve, Part IV, 1915–1919, Montague Cohen
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My Dear Eve…: The Remaining Letters from Eve’s Rutherford File, Montague Cohen, A.J. Hobbins
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McGill Physics Collection, The Rutherford Collection
