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Other personalities who have been in contact with Ernest Rutherford

Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour 1900.jpg

Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1902 to 1905. It was during this period that Ernest Rutherford first encountered him, during the annual colloquium of the British Association , in Newport.

A graduate of the humanities, philosopher, Balfour was nonetheless curious about all kinds of knowledge, including the natural sciences. Thus he was a member of the Royal Society and attended several colloquia of the British Association. He even chaired the one held in Cambridge in August 1904. He also had the opportunity to listen to Ernest Rutherford presenting his theory of radioactive decay, developed in Montreal in collaboration with Frederick Soddy.

Following this colloquium, Ernest Rutherford wrote to Arthur Balfour to congratulate him on the tenor of his inaugural address and to salute "the extent of his scientific knowledge".

Balfour replied less than two weeks later: "Your own name will for all time be associated with the growth in our conceptions of the physical universe, and it is with the utmost satisfaction that I learn of your approval of my attempt to dealfrom the outside with the problems to whose solution you have so greatly contributed".

What were the two men's ulterior motives? Did Rutherford want to be noticed? Did Balfour already see what implications might arise from harnessing the phenomenal energy that Rutherford and Soddy claimed to be contained by atoms?

In a completely different register, it may be useful to specify that Balfour had many other connections with the world of science... and therefore many other opportunities to meet Rutherford.

For example, his sister Evelyn married John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, who was director of the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge (before JJ Thomson and before Ernest Rutherford) and president of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908.

Finally, from 1885 to 1906, Balfour was Member of Parliament for East Manchester. Although he lost this constituency a year before Ernest arrived in this town, he still maintained ties with many of the local figures. Among them, the name of Chaïm Weizmann must be cited: gifted chemist working at the University of Manchester, Weizmann played a major role in the development of the Zionist idea, seeking support in Europe, trying to convince other Jewish personalities to follow him and giving birth to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925. He influenced Balfour in the drafting of the "Balfour Declaration" which dates from 1917, when the Englishman held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Weizmann was also the first president of the state of Israel.

Regardless of that, he was a colleague of Ernest Rutherford, Arthur Schuster and many other members of the Manchester Lit & Phil . In the case of Rutherford and Schuster, this professional bond gave birth to a real friendship (see below).

     Coming back to Balfour, his links with Rutherford continued. Firstly, during the First World War, Ernest Rutherford was involved in research into submarine detection at the B.I.R. (in conjunction with his French friend Paul Langevin), while Balfour was Lord of the Admiralty and, as such, creator of the B.I.R.. Balfour later served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as mentioned above.

     Once the war was over, Balfour and Rutherford took up positions even more closely linked to each other: during the year 1919, the former became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, while the latter became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, a physics research centre within the same university.    

British statesman

Meeting in 1904

Cambridge   (UK)

Image : Arthur Balfour photographed by the Bassano and Vandyk studio, around 1900;

Source: Britannica

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Boyle Robert William in 1904 - McGill Yearbook 1905.png

Robert Boyle (1883-1955)

      Son of a Newfoundland physician, Robert William Boyle began his life in much the same way as Ernest Rutherford, in a large family, in a remote corner and passing each stage of his school career thanks to work and a determination which earned him remarkable rankings and, also, scholarships to finance the following years.

       In 1901, Robert Boyle enrolled at McGill University in Montreal to study electrical engineering. He certainly didn't take many courses with Professor Rutherford, but he was nevertheless attracted by his enthusiasm. 

          He obtained his bachelor's degree in science in 1905 and his master's degree in science the following year. He then began a thesis under Rutherford's supervision, while working as a demonstrator in the physics department. When Rutherford left Montreal for Manchester, Robert had continued his thesis with John Cox, Howard Barnes and Arthur Stewart Eve, the heads of the department. But as soon as he obtained his doctorate in 1909, he crossed the Atlantic to join Rutherford's team in Manchester. This had been made possible by the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, the same one that, fourteen years earlier, had enabled Ernest to leave Christchurch and New Zealand to continue his studies at Cambridge.

        Returning to Canada in 1911, Boyle began a career as a teacher-researcher, first at McGill University in Montreal and then at the newly established University of Alberta in Edmonton. He nevertheless remained in contact with Rutherford. Both regretted that they would no longer be working together.

       Their letters mainly concerned radioactivity, since Boyle, despite his duties as a teacher of electrical engineering, managed to continue some experiments, following on from those he had undertaken in England with Rutherford and thanks to the radium that Rutherford had enabled him to obtain. 

      In early 1915, however, Boyle wrote an unrelated letter offering his services for the defence of the British Empire. As the government took some time to clear the situation and to set up the convenient organisation, the Board of Invention and Research, Boyle was able to join Rutherford's research into submarine detection only from Apris 1916. He was a pivotal figure in this field, working in partnership with the French scientists, led by Paul Langevin.

       This experience totally changed his career, as after the war he continued his research into underwater detection. There were also many civilian applications, in particular to locate icebergs and avoid another tragedy like that of the Titanic in 1912. 

       What did not change in Robert Boyle's life, however, was his warm relationship with Rutherford, which lasted until the latter's death in 1937.

Canadian Physicist

Meeting in 1906

Montreal (CA)

Image : Robert Boyle in 1904 (Yearbook 1905, McGill University, Montreal)

Source : McGill University

Robert Boyle

Sources : 

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Sigmund Freud
Sigmund_freud_um_1905.jpg

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

In 1909 , on the 20th anniversary of Clark University, Rutherford met Sigmund Freud , accompanied by his Swiss disciple Carl Gustav Jung.

Extract from my novel :

(This extract has not yet been translated)

Austrian doctor

Meeting in 1909

Worcester, Massachusetts (USA)

Image : Sigmund Freud photographed by Ludwig Grillich, around 1905;

Source: Wikipedia

    Ces deux derniers étaient venus exposer leurs vues au sujet du fonctionnement de l’esprit humain et de l’exploration de ses potentialités cachées – une spécialité médicale qu’ils désignaient par le terme de psycho-analyse . Ces idées restaient apparemment peu prisées de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, mais le directeur de l’Université Clark, Stanley Hall , lui-même psychologue et correspondant régulier de Freud, s’était entiché de ses théories au point d’avoir décalé ces festivités de deux mois pour s’adapter à l’agenda du médecin viennois et de lui avoir offert un pont d’or – sept cent cinquante dollars ! – pour qu’il vienne éclairer le peuple du Nouveau-monde sur son sujet d’étude.

     Une fois terminées toutes les conférences, chacun des vingt-neuf intervenants se vit attribuer un diplôme honoraire , y compris Ernest, bien sûr, qui avait cessé de les compter et s’était habitué à ce petit rituel. En réalité, plutôt que cette récompense sans grande utilité ni grande valeur, ce qui l’aurait vraiment réjoui aurait été de pouvoir bénéficier d’un peu plus d’enthousiasme de la part du public lors de sa présentation sur l’Histoire des particules alpha issues des substances radioactives. Mais il avait compris que le centre de l’attention était Freud, lequel avait eu le privilège de pouvoir s’exprimer à cinq reprises – une fois chaque jour, du cinq au onze septembre. Le fait qu’il le fasse en allemand ne l’avait d’ailleurs pas empêché de captiver son auditoire."

Sources :

Ellen Gleditsch vers 1910.jpg

Ellen Gleditsch (1879-1968)

  Pharmacist by training, Ellen Gleditsch turned to the study of the chemical properties of radioactive elements. 

    After her training and the start of her career in Oslo, she worked in France and the United States, before returning to her country of origin where she became a central figure in research and teaching on radioactivity.

  During her two stays abroad, she carried out her research in collaboration with two leading figures in this field: Marie Curie (1907-1912), then Bertram Boltwood (1913-1914 ).

  In Marie Curie's team, she met May Sybil Leslie and Eva Ramsted.

Chimiste Norvégienne

Image : Ellen Gleditsch circa 1910; 

Source: Museum for universitets- og vitenskapshistorie - Universitetet i Oslo (Museum of University History and Science, University of Oslo)

Ellen Gleditsch

Sources :

Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey

Maxim Gorky 1910.jpg

Maxime Gorki (1868-1936)

In 1906 , Gorky traveled to North America to raise funds. He is accompanied by his second wife, Maria Andreïeva, and his friend Nicolaï Burenine . In New York, the three Russian travelers meet Harriet Brooks , Rutherford's former assistant. They also experience some setbacks that force them to retire to the Adirondack Mountains. They will take the opportunity to make a detour to Montreal where they will visit Ernest Rutherford.

Russian writer

Meeting in 1906

Montreal (Canada)

Maxime Gorki

Image : Maxim Gorky around 1910;

Source: Wikipedia

From my novel (which begins with a conversation between Harriet Brooks and May Rutherford, Ernest's wife ):

(This extract has not yet been translated)

   — Eh bien..., hésita Harriet, perdant subitement l’enjouement qui lui était venu au fil de son évocation des Adirondacks. Justement, je... je ne retourne pas à Barnard. Je ne reprends pas mon poste. J’ai démissionné. »

     Les lèvres pincées de May s’écartèrent en une exclamation muette.

    « Barnard et Columbia ont des liens très forts, comme vous le savez, développa la Canadienne ; je risquais donc de devoir côtoyer Bergen. Après avoir rompu avec lui, je n’aurais pas pu supporter de me trouver à nouveau en sa présence. Vous comprenez ?

  — Mais bien sûr... C’est tout à fait compréhensible. Et c’est un choix des plus sages. Mais, dans ce cas... envisagez-vous de reprendre votre place auprès d’Ernest ?

  — Eh bien, pour tout vous dire... je pars en Europe.

  — En Europe ? Mais pour faire quoi ?

  — Je pars avec monsieur Gorki et Madame Andreïeva... et Nicolaï Burenine, leur ami pianiste. »

   May ne sut quoi dire et la conversation entre les deux jeunes femmes prit rapidement fin. Ernest fut un peu plus disert lorsque son épouse lui rapporta cette information le soir même :

  « Cet aventurier bolchévique lui aura tourné la tête. Selon les journaux, ce Burenine n’est pas uniquement pianiste, mais aussi trafiquant d’armes et poseur de bombes. Après l’austère et glacial Bergen Davis, notre amie Harriet a voulu voir ce que pouvait donner son antithèse. Je ne lui accorde pas deux mois pour ouvrir les yeux et retourner à sa seule vraie passion : la science. Et d’ici quelques années, elle finira par trouver un homme raisonnable qui se situe au juste milieu entre ces deux extrêmes. »

   Une fois encore, cette opinion ne sortit pas de l’intimité du couple : face aux intéressés eux-mêmes, Ernest sut rester courtois. Car début octobre, Maxime Gorki s’annonça au Macdonald Physics Building ; Maria Andreïeva et Nicolaï Burenine l’accompagnaient ; Harriet Brooks leur servait de guide .

   Les visiteurs firent un tour complet du bâtiment et Gorki fit preuve d’un enthousiasme que la barrière de la langue n’empêchait pas de mesurer. Ses exclamations, ses sourires, ses mimiques, ses grands gestes étaient bien plus explicites que les tentatives maladroites d’Ernest pour expliquer ses travaux à Maria Andreïeva dans un mauvais allemand et un français encore plus défaillant — sans parler du manque de vocabulaire scientifique de la jeune Russe, qui maîtrisait toutes ces langues à la perfection, mais avait plus l’habitude d’y recourir dans des contextes littéraires ou politiques.

Sources :

  • Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist (pages 59-60) by Marelene F. Rayner-Canham & Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham, 1992

  • Why Harriet Brooks fits the bill , by John Geddes, March 9, 2016 in Maclean's

  • Le soleil (Québec), October 8, 1906, Monday October 8, 1906, available on BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec)

May Sybil Leslie
May Sybil Leslie.jpg

May Sybil Leslie (1887-1937)

Coming from a simple background, like Ernest Rutherford, but just as strong-willed and hard-working, May Sybil Leslie was a pioneer, especially for the distinctions she received and the positions she held in chemistry research. She also made important contributions to the study of radioactivity by successively joining the teams of radioactivity pioneers, the two Nobel Prize winners Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford. She thus places herself as one of the major female figures of science at the start of the 20th century and remains an example to follow, more than a hundred years later, for all female students wishing to engage in this field of research.

British chemist

Collaboration in 1911-1912

Manchester (England)

Trained at the University of Leeds, May Sybil Leslie obtained in 1908 a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Chemistry.

She then studied for a master's degree before being awarded a so-called "1851 exhibition" scholarship (then being the first woman to obtain this funding, which Rutherford himself had benefited from in 1895 to leave New Zealand and pursue his studies at Cambridge).

She chose to join the Marie Curie team in Paris and began to work in the field of radioactivity. She worries about the dangers of radioactive materials but never dares to talk about it with Marie Curie. In Paris, she met and befriended two other foreign researchers: the Norwegian Ellen Gledditsch and the Swede Eva Ramstedt.

Both helped to make her stay in France more pleasant: Marie Curie was not easy going and made no effort to understand or speak English with her foreign researchers; In addition, 1910 saw a dramatic flood in Paris and many devices were out of order due to lack of electricity or due to humidity, not to mention freezing temperatures in the laboratories and in her housing.

Image source:  

Woodlesford

May Sybil Leslie - Margaret White - Ruth

In 1911, she left Paris and went to Manchester to work with Rutherford. In the photo shown here, we can see that she is one of only two women on the team, along with Margaret White, out of a total of 25 people. She only stays a year in this post.

During World War I, she was the head of a laboratory in Liverpool that was part of the war effort (production of explosives), an exceptional position for a woman at that time. She was rewarded for this work by the award of a doctorate from the University of Leeds in 1918, the first awarded to a woman.

She died a few weeks before her fiftieth birthday, in 1937, possibly for having handled radioactive material nearly three decades earlier.

Sources:

Richard MacLaurin
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Richard Maclaurin (1870-1920)

Coming from New Zealand like Ernest Rutherford, but arriving in Cambridge a year earlier, Richard "Dick" Cockburn MacLaurin helped his compatriot to integrate into the English city, not very welcoming for these students from the other side of the world. They only lived together for 3 years, since Dick, graduated in mathematics and law, returned in 1898 to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

   He taught for nearly 10 years in Wellington then migrated to the United States. First stationed at Columbia, in 1909 he became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If today MIT is a training and research center of world stature, it owes it to MacLaurin's entrepreneurial spirit: he made it possible to develop the institution by moving it out of Boston, across the Charles River, to a much less urbanised locality called... Cambridge. 

     MacLaurin ran MIT for 11 years, until his death in 1920 at the age of 50.

   Although Ernest and Dick's ties are not the strongest, I chose to begin my fictionalized biography of Rutherford in April 1896, when, with three other companions, they spent the Easter holidays together in Lowestoft, a seaside resort on the North Sea.. It is for this reason that my first chapter is entitled "Richard MacLaurin"... while the second is called "James MacLaurin": the elder brother of Dick indeed played an even more crucial role in in Ernest Rutherford's destiny... without knowing it. Because for Ernest, going to England in 1895 was impossible, except with a scholarship. He applied... but didn't get it: it was awarded to James MacLaurin, a chemistry student. Ernest was preparing to become a teacher in a remote village; but James decided to marry, stay in the country and give up the scholarship... which went to the second on the list. Who would win a Nobel Prize 13 years later and become the father of nuclear physics.

Teacher and administrator

New Zealand

Meeting in 1896

Cambridge (England)

Image source:  

Library of Congress

Sources:

Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi and his wife 1933.jpg

Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)

Born in Bologna to an Italian father and an Irish mother, Guglielmo Marconi went into exile in 1896 in England. His country of adoption and then the New World enabled him to gain support, then recognition and fortune.

Italian inventor

Meeting in 1932

London (England)

At 21, in 1895, Marconi presented his very first invention to the Italian Postmaster General... who rejected it. The young inventor headed north, crossed the Channel... and found much more attentive ears and more open minds in London.

But what did he invent? Approximately the same thing as Ernest Rutherford who, during the academic year 1895 - 1896 developed a detector of hertzian waves, those low frequency electromagnetic waves discovered by Heinrich Hertz in 1888. But the device of the Italian was much more efficient than the creation of the new Zealander: while Rutherford managed to detect waves three-quarter miles away, Marconi was already able to cover a mile and a half. And he would continue to imrove his systems, sending signals over the English Channel, then between Corsica and the Côte d'Azur, and, finally, between Cornwall and Quebec on December 12, 1901.

Such a feat earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 (just a year after Ernest).

In addition to their detectors and their Swedish reward, the two men will have one other point in common: Marconi died on July 20, 1937 and Rutherford on October 19 of the same year.

However, their differences are even more numerous: Marconi had only one older brother; Rutherford was the fourth of 13 siblings. Young Guglielmo was born into a well-to-do family and educated in private institutions; Ernest followed his schooling in public insitutions, succeeding in extending his university career by obtaining merit scholarships. Like Hertz, Roentgen, Becquerel or the Curies, Rutherford refused to apply for any patent for his creations (with the sole exception of a submarine detector developed during the First World War), while Marconi obtained more than 35 patents for his inventions. Rutherford took care to attribute to those who had made them the merit of the discoveries resulting from his laboratory (and he did not systematically add his name to the scientific papers published by his team). Marconi for his part did not mind attributing others' ideas to himself: one of Marconi's biographies mentions that he was aware of Rutherford's research on hertzian waves... but this is not easy to prove; on the other hand, in the case of Nikola Tesla, a good fifteen patents would be in dispute and it was up to the courts to give their opinion. For instance, te Supreme Court of the United States concluded that the Serbian had indeed been cheated by the Italian. It concerned an idea that would lead him to obtain the Nobel in 1909; but the decision was not rendered until 1943.

Finally, if Rutherford never clearly asserted his political ideas, it is not difficult to note that he was rather progressive, feminist and of an open mind, making friendships with men and women of nationalities and very diverse religions. In contrast, it is not insignificant to mention that Guglielmo Marconi, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy from December 1914 until his death, was appointed in 1930 President of the Royal Academy of Italy by Mussolini (and kept this title for the remaining seven years he had to live) and that he was also a member of the Grand Council of Fascism and unambiguously affirmed his support for the Duce.

This list of points of convergence and divergence between the two inventors would however be incomplete if I did not also mention their one and only meeting: in 1932, Ernest Lord Rutherford of Nelson, then president of the IOP (Institute of Physics) gave to Marquis Guglielmo Marconi the Kelvin Gold Medal, a distinction awarded by another British organization, the British Institute of Civil Engineers (now "Institution of Civil Engineers").

The presentation of the award took place in London on May 3rd and Ernest gave on this occasion a speech that Arthur Stewart Eve, his biographer, included in the volume he devoted to Rutherford after his death. Since he was there to praise Il Marquese Marconi, Ernest fulfilled his mission. But he did not refrain from "recontextualizing" the merits of his competitor from the start... with a pleasant irony.

He began by recalling the accomplishments of the pioneers who had preceded Marconi: James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Edward Branly, Oliver Lodge, Alexandre Popov... then he continued like this :

Image source:  

Daily Mail

Médaille Kelvin à Marconi - discours Rut

Translation for french-speaking people :

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C'est à ce stade, en 1895, que Marconi a commencé ses expériences en Italie. Il était si fermement convaincu des possibilités pratiques de cette nouvelle méthode de transmission de signaux qu'il est venu en Angleterre pour développer ses idées à une échelle pratique. Ses premières expériences en Angleterre ont été menées avec l'aide de feu Sir William Preece et de la Poste ... Marconi a progressivement étendu la portée de la signalisation de deux milles à vingt, et enfin, face aux prédictions de certaines des théories de cette époque, il a montré que les signaux pouvaient être transmis sur plus de 2000 miles à travers l'Atlantique...

 

S'il est naturel dans une si grande avancée technique que de nombreux hommes scientifiques de toutes les régions du monde aient joué leur rôle, je pense néanmoins que tous s'accordent sur le fait que le monde doit beaucoup à ce grand pionnier, le marquis Marconi, pour sa foi tenace dans les possibilités du sans fil, et pour sa capacité inventive et sa puissance à surmonter les nombreux obstacles sur son chemin, conduisant à la réalisation complète de son rêve précoce en moins de vingt ans - une réalisation vraiment magnifique!

 

Je me permets de vous rappeler que dans ma jeunesse à Cambridge, j'étais moi-même intéressé par les ondes électriques et j'ai conçu en 1896 un simple détecteur magnétique pour ces ondes. Je suis heureux de savoir que Marconi a pu développer et transformer le germe de ce simple appareil en un détecteur fiable et métrique qui pendant une dizaine d'années a rendu un service utile à l'humanité....

Sources:

Norah Schuster
440px-Nora_Schuster_aged_3,_seated,_facing_forwards._Photograph,_c_Wellcome_V0029561.jpg

Norah Schuster (1892-1991)

Born in Manchester, Norah Schuster was one of five children of physicist Arthur Schuster and his wife, Caroline Loveday. She will become a brilliant pathologist.

British doctor .

Meeting in  1907

Manchester (England)

Pictures:  

  • Norah Schuster at age 3 (1895)

  • Norah Schuster's hands x-rayed by her father, Arthur Schuster

  • Norah Schuster at the first meeting of the British Pathological Association, 1928

Source: Wikipedia

    Norah Schuster began her medical studies in 1911 in Manchester , then continued them at Cambridge , graduating in 1918. In the meantime, she had also been an assistant in the pathology laboratory of the Manchester Royal Infirmary.  

    However, her first medical experience could be located in 1895: aged three, she was indeed used as a guinea pig by her father to test the revolutionary method of photography that the German Wilhelm Roentgen had just invented: X-ray photography.   

   The two hands shown here are hers.  

   She had no sequelae and was not, moreover, the only child to take part in these experiments: her older brother, Leonard, had his feet x-rayed and, all over the world, other scientists made use of their own children. This is notably the case of William Henry Bragg , who x-rayed his eldest son William Lawrence Bragg , in the Australian city of Adelaide. Twenty years later, father and son Bragg jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on diffraction... of X-rays. 

Norah Schuster's Hands by Arthur Schuster.jpg

In Manchester , Norah also met Chaim Weizmann .  Eighteen years her senior, Weizmann appeared to Norah as a elder brother, even a guide, especially on the subject of Zionism. It must be said that Weizmann always tried to convince everyone he met to adhere to his political ideals. In the case of Norah Schuster, he saw two additional reasons: even if her mother was Christian and her father, Arthur Schuster, had converted to the same religion, the fact remained that Norah had Jewish ancestors. and besides, she was young. It was on the representatives of this new generation that Weizmann counted to bring about the great Zionist project: the creation of a Jewish state.  

The only concern was that Weizmann gradually came to see Norah Schuster not only as a potential ally, but also as an attractive young girl. Norah refused his advances and Caroline, his mother, made it clear to Weizmann that it was better for him to keep his distance. For information, when this scene occurred, in 1912, Weizmann was married.  

Norah also changed town to continue her studies, as she went to Newnham College in Cambridge that year. 

Norah Schuster at the First_meeting_of_the_British_Pathological_Association,_1928._Wellcom

​ She became a respected pathologist (and the only woman to practice in this field for many years: in the photo of the 1928 congress bringing together specialists in this subject, she is the only woman (2nd from the right in 2nd row) surrounded by fifteen men.  

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In addition to her activities in various hospitals, she was involved in the Emergency Medical Service  during the Second World War She participated in the founding of the Royal College of Pathologists and became president of the Association of Clinical Pathologists in 1950. She was also vice-president of the Society for the History of Medicine, a section of the Royal Society of medicine.

She wrote numerous scientific publications in her field, as well as books on the history of medicine.  

Since her death in 1991, the Norah Schuster Prize has been awarded annually by the Society for the History of Medicine.

Sources : 

Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann 1904.JPG

Chimiste et homme d'état russe, britannique puis israélien.

Rencontre en 1907

Manchester (Angleterre)

Images : 

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Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952)

Born in the Russian Empire, educated in Germany and Switzerland, naturalized as a British citizen in 1910 after spending six years in Manchester, Chaim Weizmann, defender of the Zionist cause, would become the first president of the state of Israel.

  In his autobiography, Trial and error , Chaim Weizmann evokes three personalities met during his stay in Manchester. These were not the only ones, of course, since he built a whole network of relationships which enabled him to advance the Zionist cause which was, alongside his crucial work in the field of chemistry, his main concern.

  The three men he portrays were all three faculty members of Victoria University, to which he himself belonged.

  The first one is Arthur Schuster, whose generosity and kindness he praises, including in his praise Carrie Schuster, the physicist's wife. Vera Weizmann and Carrie Schuster also maintained a very long friendship.

  The second one is Samuel Alexander, a philosopher who was, among all of Ernest Rutherford's colleagues, the closest to Ernest Rutherford's home in Withington. Alexander also played an intermediary role, not only between Weizmann and Balfour, but also between Rutherford and the Mancunian feminist and suffragist movements, of which he was an active member.

Finally, Weizmann talks at length about Ernest Rutherford, casting a very special light on him...

Vera and Chaim Weizmann on their wedding

   A third man with whom I stood on a very friendly footing was Ernest (later Lord) Rutherford, and this too was a friendship which survived years of separation. […] Rutherford was the very opposite of Schuster.  Youthful, energetic, boisterous, he suggested anything but the scientist.

   He talked readily and vigorously on every subject under the sun, often without knowing anything about it. Going down to the refectory for lunch I would hear the loud, friendly voice rolling up the corridor.

   He was quite devoid of any political knowledge or feelings, being entirely taken up in his epoch-making scientific work. He was a kindly person, but he did not suffer fools gladly. […] Any worker who came to him and did not prove to be a first-class man was out in short order.     Thus, to be allowed to work with Rutherford was soon recognized as an distinction, and a galaxy of famous young physicists and chemists issued from his school. Niels Bohr, the Danish Nobel Prize winner, was among them; so was the brilliant Moseley, whose promising life was cut short at the age of twenty-seven by a Turkish bullet at Gallipoli; Andrade, a young Spanish Jew, Wilson, Geiger and others of note were also of Rutherford's school.

    With all this, Rutherford was modest, simple and enormously good natured. When he went to Cambridge I lost sight of him for a time.

He later became, at my prompting, a friend of the Hebrew University, and presided once or twice over dinners on its behalf.

Chaim Weizmann Albert Einstein 1921.JPG

    I cannot help linking my memories of Rutherford with those of a closer friend, Albert Einstein. I have retained the distinct impression that Rutherford was not terribly impressed by Einstein's work, while Einstein on the other hand always spoke to me of Rutherford in the highest terms, calling him a second Newton. As scientists, the two men were strongly contrasting types - Einstein all calculation, Rutherford all experiment. The personal contrast was not less remarkable: Einstein looked like an etherealized body, Rutherford looked like a big, healthy, boisterous New Zealander"- which is exactly what he was. But there is no doubt that as an experimenter, Rutherford was a genius, one of the greatest. He worked by intuition, and whatever he touched turned to gold. He seemed to have a sixth sense in his tackling of experimental problems. [….]

Rutherford greatly enjoyed pulling my leg about Zionism.

“What's wrong with England? He used to ask me, uproariously, and laugh loudly enough to be heard halfway across the university.

One morning, when I came into the common room, he thrust the London Times under my nose:

“Look at that,” he roared.

Israel Gollancz had been appointed professor of Old English literature at Queen's College, London.

" You see! shouted Rutherford. I understand that Gollancz's grandfather came here from Galicia! Not chemistry, or physics, mind you, but literature, something of national significance! ".

And he finished up with a great burst of laughter.

“You know, professor,” I said, “if I had to appoint a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I would not take an Englishman!

- There you are! shot back Rutherford. I always said you were narrow-minded, bigoted and jingoistic.

'For England,' I explained, 'it doesn't matter much. Your culture is too well established. Gollancz may even bring a new note into the teaching of English literature, and England will profit by it. But if you had ten chairs of English literature and ten Jews got them, what would you think of it?

- Oh that! roared Rutherford, that would be a national calamity. "

 

None of the men at Manchester had so much as heard of Zionism before they met me. Yet is extraordinary, to say the least, that, whether or not they became Zionists, they were all willing to help along. Even Rutherford, with all his banter, was taken by the idea of the Hebrew University.

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Balfour and Weizmann on Balfour’s 1925 v
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Margaret White

Margaret White (1889-1977)

Born not far from Manchester, Margaret White attended all her schooling there, before studying at the University  Victoria, from which she graduated in science in 1910.

Météorologiste britannique.

Rencontre en 1907

Manchester (Angleterre)

    Having started her studies in physics in 1907 at the Victoria University of Manchester, it is highly probable that Margaret White had as a teacher Professor Rutherford, who arrived at the same location at the begining of the same year. However, it was not until 1911 that she became a researcher there. 

    Before that, she taught for a year in Glossop, a town in Derbyshire about twenty miles east of Manchester, She continued this teaching activity once she returns to Victoria University, up until 1916. Her field was atmospheric pollution and she also took charge of the meteorology department.

    From 1916 to 1922, she led the research team of the Air Pollution Advisory Commission attached to Manchester City Council.

      She left this city for London and Imperial College in 1922, but continued her career, clinbing higher and higher in the academic hierarchy. This is also a particularity in the life of Margaret White: despite her marriage in 1915, she continued to exercise her profession and to serve on various committees. This situation was not common at the time, since most women ceased their professional activities as soon as they married (this was the case for Harriet Brooks) or remained single to freely continue their work (this was the case of Lise Meitner). In any case, however, the fight to find a place in academia remained difficult. We can say that Margaret White won hands down. 

    She worked until the late 1940s at Imperial College in London on combustion and heat transfer and thus participated in the development of various equipment used during the Second World War (aircraft gas turbines, flamethrowers, gas burners in aerodromes). Her marriage, on the other hand, ended in 1932. However, she is still better known by her husband's name, or with the two names together: Margaret White Fishenden.

      She appears in three photographs of the physics research group at the Victoria University of Manchester, in 1910, 1912 and 1913. Only one other woman can bee seen in one of these images: May Sybil Leslie, in the 1912 picture (where Margaret White wears a large black hat).

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