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 (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 .
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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.
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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.
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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.
A suivre....
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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
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