Characters in Rutherford's life
Bertram Boltwood
(1870-1927)
Fascinated by a lecture Ernest Rutherford gave in Yale, Connecticut, in 1904, Bertram Borden Boltwood (aka BBB), a chemist who worked there, proposed a collaboration with the New Zealand physicist (then based in Montreal ). Their partnership will prove to be very fruitful. BBB will identify in particular a new radioactive body, but it will mainly carry out analyzes and calculations (following an idea of Ernest Rutherford) to determine the age of the Earth. This will be the first dating method based on the rate of decay of radioactive elements.
ER and BBB will also forge a solid friendship that only the First World War will temporarily wane: BBB, although American, was openly progermanic, since his studies in Germany; Ernest, now based in Manchester, defended the British Empire (and even worked to develop defense systems).
Apart from this "slump" and the period 1909-1910 during which BBB will come to work with Rutherford in Manchester , they will wrtite each other a profuse amount of letters, collected in a volume entitled Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity .
As the title indicates, these letters allowed the two scientists to share their results and their ideas concerning their field of research. But they also included personal reflections and commented on the work of their colleagues. These passages are a valuable source for my biography of Rutherford. I find concrete and personal details there, but I can also identify more precisely the state of mind of my central character, his best friend and those they evoke.
I will not detail this here, so I will only emphasize the humor of the two friends. The most talented was arguably BBB, champion of the sharp formula and and adept of acidic irony. Almost all the physicists and chemists of the time, including Marie Curie, received their share of sarcasm "made in Yale".
Thus by skipping the "technical" passages, the book Letters on radioactivity frequently gives a smile. And it allows me to draw something to breathe more life into my novel.
Bertram Boltwood in 1898
Source : Yale Chemistry
Bertram Boltwood (light costume) with other researchers from the physics department at Victoria University of Manchester (including Hans Geiger , far left).
BBB had joined Rutherford in 1909-1910 to work in his team. He will refuse the proposal of Rutherford who wanted to keep him in England and he will go back to Yale.
Besides his humor, BBB had a peculiarity that allowed him to never go unnoticed: he was six feet five inches, or a little over one meter ninety-five .
Source: Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity, page 204
Otto Hahn , Bertram Boltwood and Ernest Rutherford on a trip to Munich in the late summer of 1910.
Source: Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity, page 205
Boltwood and Rutherford traveled together again, accompanied by May and Eileen, in 1913. They visited southern Germany and the Dolomites.
However, the complicity and scientific mutual support between the two men came to a halt during the First World War.
Boltwood was quick to express pro-German views in his letters, while Rutherford defended the British Empire, and even contributed to the war effort by getting involved in research into submarine detection techniques as part of the Board of Invention and Research.
Boltwood's positive opinion of Germany stemmed from his many trips there: in his twentieth year, he spent three months traveling with friends between the British Isles, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany.
He returned two years later, to spend two full years with rare-earth chemist Gerhard Krüss in Munich. After returning to Yale, he spent a further semester in Leipzig in 1896 with chemist Wilhelm Ostwald.
Boltwood's positive opinion of Germany stemmed from his many trips there: in his twentieth year, he spent three months traveling with friends between the British Isles, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany.
He returned two years later, to spend two full years with rare-earth chemist Gerhard Krüss in Munich. After returning to Yale, he spent a further semester in Leipzig in 1896, working with chemist Wilhelm Ostwald.
The break between Boltwood and Rutherford came at the beginning of 1916: on February 21, Ernest wrote a letter to his friend. Boltwood never replied.
Fifteen months later, Rutherford was on a trip to the United States: Woodrow Wilson had just committed his country to war, and the idea of a transatlantic partnership between teams of scientists engaged in research for national defense was born. Accompanied by a British officer and several French scientists, Ernest made the crossing, holding meetings in Washington and visiting scientific, military and industrial sites. In the midst of all these official obligations, he made a detour to Yale, to receive yet another honorary doctorate. It was there that he met Bertram Boltwood again.
“Boltwood has completely changed his mind and is now working on anti-submarine devices,” he wrote to May on June 23, 1917.
This pithy sentence nevertheless clearly signified that the friendship between the two researchers had just been renewed.
Another matter on which Bertram Boltwood changed his mind concerned Marie Curie’s scientific abilities. He had met her in Brussels in 1910, during the formation of the International Commission on Radium Standards, and did not see her again until 1921, when the French scientist undertook a lengthy tour of the United States, from early May to mid-June. Her journey included a stop in New Haven, home to Yale University. She was due to receive an honorary degree there and visit Boltwood’s laboratory.
Boltwood was not particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of this meeting and had clearly opposed the awarding of an honorary doctorate to his colleague. He was, in fact, convinced that she had made all her discoveries before 1903 and had made no further progress since then. He acknowledged his mistake in a letter to his friend Rutherford dated 14 July 1921:
‘I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that she was quite keen about scientific matters and in an unusually amiable mood, although she is in very poor physical condition and was on the verge of a breakdown all the time she was over here. She has learned a lot of English since we saw her in Brussels and gets along quite well in a conversation.”
Then, a few lines further on, setting aside both his usual caustic tone and his contempt for Marie Curie, he allowed himself to make a heartfelt confession: "I felt sorry for the poor old girl, she was a distinctly pathetic figure. She was very modest and unassuming, and she seemed frightened at all the fuss the people made over her."
Two years later, a new building dedicated to chemistry was opened: the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory. Boltwood had once again been put in charge of this project as early as 1918. The aim was to bring together two separate chemistry departments. He had been appointed director of this new facility and, in addition to the design and construction of the Sterling Laboratory, he found himself swamped with administrative tasks that took him away from his true vocation as a chemist.
This workload took a heavy toll on his health. In 1924, he took leave following a nervous breakdown. He returned to work after a year, but suffered several episodes of depression over the following two years.
Finally, he took his own life at his holiday home in Hancock Point, Maine, on 15 August 1927.
Sterling Chemistry Laboratory - Source : Yale University
Bertram B. Boltwood's gravestone, Amherst, Hampshire, Massachusetts
Source : Findagrave
Sources:
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Biographical memoir of Bertram Borden Boltwood , by Alois F. Kovarik, 1929 (including for the header image)
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Rutherford, Radioactivity, and the Atomic Nucleus , by Helge Kragh
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Rutherford, Scientist Supreme , book (1999) and website by John Campbell
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Rutherford, Simple Genius , David Wilson