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Other places visited by Rutherford

Adelaide (AUS)

1895: on his journey between New Zealand and England, Ernest Rutherford makes a stopover in Adelaide. He will take the opportunity to drop by the university, to greet the local "mathematics and applied physics" professor, William Henry Bragg. 

Neither one nor the other then suspected the links that would be woven between them a few years later.

1914: Rutherford returns to Adelaide, as part of the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science , scheduled in several towns in Australia and New Zealand. His ship docked just days after Britain declared war on Germany. The BAAS colloquium is modified, but the main meetings are maintained.

Adelaide
Image : King William street, Adelaide, 1889.

Bad Ischl (AUT)

1913: during the summer, Ernest Rutherford, accompanied by his wife, May, and his daughter Eileen, reaches continental Europe at the wheel of his Wolesley-Siddeley.

The small family goes to Germany, where they are expected by Hans Geiger. The meeting is fixed in Rothenburg. After a few days leading the small troop to Munich, Geiger returns to Berlin. He is replaced by Bertram Boltwood, Rutherford's American friend.

Several sources indicate that they then spent three weeks traveling the Tyrol and the Dolomites.

(Italian region but which, at the time, was included in Austrian territory).

Despite extensive research, I did not find any details on the route followed, except for one stage: on August 7, our three tourists were mentioned as clients of a hotel in Bad Ischl.

This spa town was mainly home to an imperial residence. It is located not far from Salzburg.

Bad Ischl
Bad Ischl - Kaiservilla - Foto Sammlung
Bad Ischl - Esplanade 1 IMG_6326.jpg
Bad Ischl - Fremden Liste - 1913 08 08a.
Bad Ischl - Fremden Liste - 1913 08 08b.

Bad Ischl's Fremden-List, dated August 8, 1913, lists the names of guests of various hotels and guesthouses.

Source: ANNO (AustriaN Newspapers Online) Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

The first two lines of the Hotel Austria list are Professor Rutherfort (sic) and Madame, followed by Professor Boltwood.

The Hotel Austria building still exists, but is now occupied by the Bad Ischl Municipal Museum .

Image source: Austria Forum , photograph by Ewald Judt .

The rest of the journey took the Wolesley-Siddeley through the grandiose landscapes of the southern Alps, and in particular on the route shown below: the Great Route of the Dolomites, completed in 1909.

As I said, I don't know the exact route (i.e. the other stopping points after Bad Ischl), but it is very likely that Ernest Rutherford passed that way (there wasn't really any other choice to cross the dolomites).

Image source: Lagazuaoi Dolomiti (the site features many other wonderful images)

Dolomiten Strasse.jpg
Carcassonne
Carcassone - La Cité - début XXè.png

Image: the City of Carcassone and the Porte d'Aude at the beginning of the 20th century. Source: Drouot-Morand

Carcassonne (F)

1912: in April, after a meeting of the Radium Committee in Paris (where he will see Marie Curie again), Ernest goes to Le Havre. There he joined his wife, May , as well as his friend William Henry Bragg, now based in Leeds. But he also reunites with his dear Wolesley-Siddeley .

May, Ernest and WHB then set off for a three-week journey that will take them to Carcassonne and the Pyrenees.

It will then be necessary to return to Manchester, which represents 1600 km. With peak speeds of 30 km / h, but an average of 20 km / h. I'll let you calculate the travel time.

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1927: "Congresso internazionale dei fisici".

The primary objective of this international meeting is to commemorate the centenary of the death of Alessandro Volta, a figure of Como and precursors of the study of electricity.

Quantum physicists are strongly represented, but Rutherford, who stands out, is also present at the Istituto Carducci in Como, from September 11 to 16, 1927.

The congress is opened on September 11 by Quirino Majorana, president of the Italian Society of Physics, and concludes with a visit to the University of Pavia on September 17, followed by a gathering in Rome, on the Capitol, on the occasion which Guglielmo Marconi delivers a speech in honor of Volta and in the presence of Mussolini.

Meanwhile, Niels Bohr had the opportunity to present his principle of complementarity for the first time. Enrico Fermi also spoke. Ernest Rutherford also had the pleasure of seeing Hendrik Lorentz and William Lawrence Bragg again .

The big absent from this celebration of Italian science is Albert Einstein, who refused to make the trip to show his disapproval with Mussolini.

Como (I)

Como

Picture :

Ernest Rutherford - Robert Millikan - He
Participants au congrès de physique de C
Trams de Genève - Boulevard de Plainpalais

Geneva (CH)

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Mary Newton (Ernest's mother-in-law) is New Zealand's representative at this international conference. Ernest and May made the trip to Europe from Montreal for Ernest to defend to British scientists the theories of radioactivity that he developed in partnership with Frederick Soddy. The young couple (and their daughter Eileen ) take advantage of being on this side of the Atlantic to take a few days off on the continent: in Geneva, therefore, then in Paris on the way back (which will be the occasion of the first meeting with Marie Curie ).

Geneva
Navigation beacon at Hawkcraig Point.jpg

Hawkcraig (UK)

1915: The Royal Navy creates a research center near the village of Aberdour, Scotland. This point, called Hawkcraig, faces Edinburgh on the River Forth estuary.

Placed under the authority of a naval officer, Captain Cyril Ryan, this site works in a very empirical manner on submarine detection systems.

Appointed to the expert group of Board of Invention and Research, Ernest Rutherford took charge of the subject from September 1915. He begins by carrying out tests in tanks installed in his laboratory in Manchester, then transposes his work into real conditions, at the Firth of Forth experimental station. In November, he sends two assistants, Albert Beaumont Wood and Harold Gerrard, to carry out these tests at Hawkcraig, but he still pays regular visits to Girth of Gorth expérimental station.

In May 1916, William Henry Bragg took the lead of this small group of scientists, but Rutherford does not stop his trips to Aberdour, since he remains involved in work on the detection of submarines until 1917.

Aberdour map 1919.png
Hawkcraig
Kamouraska
Le village de Kamouraska vu à partir du

Picture :

The village of Kamouraska seen from the St.Lawrence River around 1920

S ource: Wikipedia

Kamouraska, Lost River, etc.  (Can, UK, NZ)

Their first summer after settling in Montreal (and the birth of their daughter Eileen  late March 1901), Ernest and May spent it in town. The following year, they decided to move away: the heat and pollution did not constitute an ideal setting for a summer vacation. They chose the following destinations:

1902 : Kamouraska, in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, some one hundred and ten miles north of Quebec.

1903 : they crossed the Atlantic at the end of the spring so that Ernest went to present his latest discoveries in London and to take part in the annual colloquium of the BA, the British Association for the Advancement of Science , in Southport. Their vacation took them to Geneva , Paris   and Chester, Cheshire. Initially, they had planned a stay in Wales, to be able to take advantage of the proximity of the sea and to be close to Southport, but the calamitous weather had quickly pushed them to flee a little further inland. During this stay in Chester, the Rutherfords received Frederick Soddy , now stationed in London, Professor Robert Laing, from Christchurch (who had come for the Southport colloquium) and Charles Newton, May's brother, a medical student in Edinburgh._cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_

1904 : May and Ernest take a rental house "near a lake in the Laurentians". I haven't been able to get any more specifics on the location. On the other hand, I found in various sources the list of visitors who joined the young couple and their daughter:   Charlie Newton, May's brother, still a medical student in Edinburgh; Mrs Newton, May's (and Charles') mother, direct from Christchurch ; Jack Erskine , Ernest's Christchurch college classmate; John William Joynt , former Principal of Nelson College; and, finally, the first representative of the Rutherford tribe to set foot on North American soil: Ethel, the seventh of Ernest's surviving siblings, but the third to s to be married (she was therefore accompanied by her husband Henry Sergel and their two-year-old son, Carl). In September, Ernest will return to Montreal , while May and her daughter will leave with the New Zealanders so that little Eileen can discover the country of her parents' birth and, above all,  her grandparents paternal .

1905 : Ernest joins May and Eileen in New Zealand. The holidays take place between Pungarehu (with Martha and James Rutherford) and Christchurch (with Mrs Newton). However, Ernest and May allow themselves a little romantic trip: the young woman will wait for her husband when the steamer arrives in Auckland; they stay there one night, at the Grand Hotel; they reach the Rotorua lakes region by train, then head south to the shores of Lake Taupo, before following the course of the Wanganui River to the town of the same name. Then they take the train back to New Plymouth to reach Tipoka, the Rutherford family home.

1906 : Lost River, seventy miles northwest of Montreal. It was the last summer that Ernest and May spent in Canada: in the spring of 1907, they left Montreal for Manchester. 

1907 : the summer following Rutherford's installation in Manchester   was above all devoted to settling in this new city and this new laboratory. May and Eileen initially stayed in London, together with Mrs Newton, May's mother, and Harriet Brooks , who was expected to join Rutherford's team in Manchester. But things didn't turn out quite that way. Ernest, having made his mark at the University of Manchester, joined his family, who were staying in a hotel in the Bayswater district.

1908 : Llanrwst (pronounced [ɬanˈruːst] in Welsh), village in Conwy, in the north of Wales, where Ernest had nothing to do but sleep, read and eat – there was not even a golf course !

Lowestoft
Terrasse Wellington et la plage, Lowestoft

Pictures:

(1) Wellington Terrace and the beach, Lowestoft

Source: Suffolk Travel Guides & Information

(2) Ernest and his vacation companions. S ource: AIP

Lowestoft (UK)

1896: Easter break, with a few other Cambridge students , including Richard MacLaurin (seated right)

Easter holiday in 1896
Philadelphia
Witherspoon Building - Philadelphia.jpg

Images :

(1) Witherspoon Building, Philadelphie, 1899

Source : The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia (US)

1906: bicentenary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, from April 17 to 20.

On this occasion, Ernest met Hendrik Lorentz: the Dutch physicist was in residence for a month and a half at Columbia University in New York. There, three times a week, he gave lectures on the theory of the electron. for a series of lectures he gave at Columbia University, New York.

The two men would meet again in 1910 in Brussels, for the congress of radiology, then on several occasions during the following years, still in the Belgian capital, within the framework of the Solvay congresses.

The celebrations took place first at Witherspoon Hall, then at the premises of the university (founded by Benjamin Franklin) and, finally, at his grave.

Rutherford made a presentation, titled "The Modern Theories of Electricity and their Relation to the Franklinian Theory" (Modern Theories of Electricity and their Relation to Franklinian Theory). Like all the participants, Ernest was present to pay tribute to the great statesman and great scientist who died in this city 116 years earlier. But he wasn't in the habit of picking up tweezers, let alone carrying mere mortals, whoever they were, to the pinnacle.

His conclusion was therefore full of frankness:

“Franklin's theory at a time when so little was known about electricity was certainly remarkable, but if it survived for more than a century, it was at the cost of many modifications. We must therefore avoid unduly exaggerating the value of his contributions and underestimating the fundamental importance and scope of the work carried out since his time to better understand electricity. Franklin was gifted with exceptional sagacity, but let us refrain from attributing to him the slightest gift of prophecy. "

It wasn't very nice for the man of the day; but that wasn't so bad compared to the other remark Rutherford made later that day about poor Benjamin Franklin:

“Old Ben had many other talents besides physics and politics. Let us not forget that he participated wonderfully in the growth of the population of London, Paris and Philadelphia ”,

These two projections did not prevent the University of Pennsylvania from awarding Ernest an honorary title. This kind of fictitious distinction (normally reserved for the seventies, as he confided to his mother when recounting the episode) made him smile gently, especially when, as was the case in Philadelphia, twenty other people received it in same time as him. Among these, there was Lorentz, of course, but also two men who did not make the trip to collect their diploma: the King of England and an Italian named Guglielmo Marconi - a character that Ernest had never met. , but that he did not risk having forgotten.

Sources:

Postbridge
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Postbridge (UK)

  Postbridge, Devon, is a hamlet at the crossroads of back roads on Dartmoor (see map below).
   Its peculiarities are a 13th century stone slab bridge (clapper bridge or "cyclopean" bridge, images 1 and 2) and a hotel.
  In 1911, under the direction of Solomon Warne, the establishment (picture 3) was a "Temperance Hotel". It was not the only one in the country but surely constituted a stop of choice for the enemies of alcohol.

183720259_10218867624377302_787180513580
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   Among the advocates of sobriety was May Rutherford, wife of the head of the physics department at the University of Manchester. Having lost her drunken father as a child, she had followed her mother, Mary Newton, in her fight against this scourge. Mrs Newton had also been involved in the campaign for women's suffrage... which made New Zealand the first country in the world to establish this right. But this is another story.

   Under the influence of his wife, Rutherford was therefore sober and selected his resorts accordingly. Thus, in early April 1911, the couple stayed at the Temperance Hotel in Postbridge.


   How do I know this?


   On the 2nd of this month the decennial census of England and Wales took place (picture 5). Names, first names, age, relationship to head of household, occupation, place of birth appear on the document, scanned and accessible at findmypast.co.uk

    I then noticed (picture 8) that 2 other Mancunians were accompanying the Rutherfords: Hilda Johnstone (picture 6), historian, collaborator and sister-in-law of Thomas F. Tout, pontiff of the university and friend of Ernest; and Charles Galton Darwin (picture 7), mathematician, assistant to Rutherford and grandson of his famous grandfather, whose first name he had inherited.

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183410815_10218867624137296_763766091828
183337260_10218867624417303_355836085549
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Image sources:

   But where was Eileen, May and Ernest's daughter? The same census (picture 8) indicates that she remained in Manchester, with the maid.

  And this source also provides the name of this secondary character: Jessie Noden.

   Out of oblivion, she also appears in my novel.

183589843_10218867624257299_237115194770
Rothenburg
Rothenburg ob der Tauber - Plönlein -1910

Image: Wikipedia

Rothenburg (DE)

   Summer 1913: The Rutherford family (May, Ernest and little Eileen, then aged 12) move to mainland Europe.    The holidays begin with a stop in Rothenburg, where Hans Geiger, from Berlin, joins his former boss from Manchester. They spend a few days together, before going their separate ways in Munich.

   In the Bavarian capital, Ernest finds another friend: the American chemist Bertram Boltwood, who never misses an opportunity to visit this country where he did a good part of his studies and that he particularly likes. None of the three friends can then guess that the following year will question the ties that unite them.

   In the meantime, Boltwood and the Rutherford family continue their journey: they travel by car through southern Germany, Tyrol and finally the Dolomites for three weeks.

Source: Rutherford: being the life and letters of the Rt. Hon. Lord Rutherford, OM ., Arthur S. Eve, 1939, page 223

Map of southern German Empire and western Austria-Hungary, dating from 1911 (detail).

Source: University of Texas .

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

Rothenburg is located near Nuremberg (going west)

Tyrol is a part of the Alps which is partly in Austria and partly in Italy (Alto Adige region, around Trento )

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

The Dolomites are a mountain range stretching across northern Italy, roughly between Trento and Belluno

Vacances Rutherford 1913.jpg

Image: scenic view of the Dolomites.

Photo: Harry J Burgess, via Pixabay

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San Francisco
San Francisco après le tremblement de terre de 1906.

Image: Picryl

San Francisco (US)

1906: course at Berkeley, from late June to early August. The audience, made up of teachers and researchers, was far more attentive than the restless students Ernest was used to in Montreal .

During his stay, he discovered the ruins of San Francisco, devastated the previous April by an earthquake and fires.

We also need the knowledge of Jacques Loeb, a biologist who introduced him to his work on the parthenogenesis of sea urchins. Ernest will welcome Jacques' son Leonard years later in his Cambridge laboratory. He also meets the Taylors who will serve as guides to May during their trip to Stockholm two years later.

Always so fond of epistolary exchanges , he writes every two days to May , his wife, who remained in Montreal with their daughter; she answers him much less often. He is also working on finalizing his second book , establishing his index and carrying out some experiments on radium in the premises of the university.

On the return trip to Montreal, Ernest stops at the Grand Canyon.

Image : The San Francisco call - 30 July 1906 - Source : Chronicling America.

The San Francisco call - 30 July 1906 -

San Francisco was also the port of embarkation to reach New Zealand (Auckland to be precise), via Apia, in German Samoa.

Ernest will embark there in 1900 to get married. May and Eileen will leave in 1904 so that the young mother goes to present her daughter to Ernest's parents. The latter will take the boat the following summer to join them.

Voyage d'Ernest Rutherford entre Montréa
Winnipeg
Winnipeg - Union Bank of Canada and City

Winnipeg (CAN)

1909: Annual Conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science .

This is one of the rare editions of this colloquium which takes place outside the British Isles: since the creation of the BA in 1831, it is only the fourth time that the association has thus moved away from the center of the 'Empire. Canada had already been chosen in 1884 and 1897, with meetings held in Montreal and Toronto respectively. The third "distant" edition was held in 1905 in South Africa,


The Winnipeg Symposium is chaired by JJ Thomson , but Ernest Rutherford is also highlighted: he chairs the debates in Section A, bringing together physicists and mathematicians. Honorary position which clearly shows the importance he has acquired within the scientific community.

In addition to JJ, Ernest finds others of his acquaintances and in particular three of his collaborators from the time he worked in Montreal : the German Otto Hahn , the Englishman Arthur Stewart Eve and the American Howard Barnes, who had been promoted. at Rutherford's post when the latter had left Canada in 1907. Once the conference was over, Ernest made a stopover in Montreal before returning to England; on this occasion he will see another of his former collaborators (and undoubtedly the most gifted), Harriet Brooks .

Image: Wikipedia

George Bryce - Caricature 1909.jpg

The choice of Winnipeg for this annual BA meeting is the result of intense lobbying work by a few intellectuals from this city of Manitoba, foremost among them the Reverend George Bryce, founder of Manitoba College, one of the two establishments. higher education in the city.

With a few other notables, he had started in 1905 to seek local and national support, in the political as well as in the scientific world. He had thus obtained the support of the Royal Society of Canada and the invaluable assistance of the Prime Minister of Canada in person, Sir Wilfred Laurier, who had, in addition, made a contribution of twenty-five thousand dollars.

In 1909, Winnipeg could only profit from this gathering of hundreds of great scientists on its territory. It has only been 35 years that the city has existed, it has a little over 120,000 inhabitants (seven times less than Manchester, where Rutherford has lived for two years) and hardly rivals the North American metropoles. It is, however, extremely dynamic: constructions are continually emerging from the ground, institutions worthy of a great city are created (including the Manitoba College mentioned above) and its population has tripled during the decade preceding this meeting of the British Association. .

Pictures:

Winnipeg Broadway 1907.jpg
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