top of page

Places of Ernest Rutherford's life

Le cheval et la calèche de M Grant sur l

Montreal (Canada)

Recruited in 1898 by McGill University in Montreal as a physics teacher, Ernest Rutherford remained there until 1907.

There he made his first major discoveries in the field of radioactivity.

They earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908

Rutherford's housing in Montreal

Housing

Rutherford stays in Montreal

1898-1907: lives and works there

1909: visit following the Winnipeg Congress

1914: visit

....

Upon his arrival in Montreal on Tuesday September 20, 1898, Ernest was lodged by the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Henry Bovey.

The latter's house was built by Andrew Thomas Taylor, the architect behind many McGill University buildings, including the Macdonald Physics Building where Rutherford would practice.

Bovey's residence was called "Sunnandene" and was located at 31 Ontario avenue, on the slopes of Mont-Royal (now Museum avenue).

It is a semi-detached house (the closest part belonged to Frederick Redpath, another notable Montrealer).

Source: McCord Museum

Frederick Redpath house - Ontario Avenue

The following Monday, September 26, Ernest would take accommodation "avenue McGill College", along with another professor from the University: Ernest William MacBride. This Irish zoologist, five years older than Rutherford, was also starting a new position in Canada. The two men had met each other during their crossing of the Atlantic: they shared the same cabin in the Yorkshire, from Liverpool to Montreal... and together endured rough sailing.

A certain James Wallace Walker, chemist, will complete the duo of singles housed at this address.

Ernest will leave this place in 1900, when he will return to New Zealand to get married.

The name of their landlady is not mentioned in any of the biographies of Rutherford that I have read. However, the 1901 Montreal census (just after Ernest's departure) shows Ernest McBride at the same address as two other men (who are no longer Rutherford or Walker) and an older woman (45) named Mary Williams.

Mrs Williams' profession being “housekeeper”, I allowed myself to imagine that it was at her place that Ernest Rutherford had lived his last two years of celibacy. Mrs Williams therefore appears in my novel.

After his marriage, Ernest will move into a house located at 157 rue Sainte Famille (currently at number 3702), with his wife, May.

Their daughter Eileen was born there on March 30, 1901.

(On the attached image, from Google map, this is the very first house to the right of the tree planted on the sidewalk).

Montréal - 3702 rue Sainte Famille en 20
Montréal - Situation des lieux liés à Er

Location of the main places in Montreal linked to Ernest Rutherford :

1: McGill University Physics Building (Macdonald Physics Building)

2: Avenue Ontario (Henry Bovey's house)

3: Avenue McGill College: boarding house where Ernest lived from 1898 to 1900

4: 157 rue Sainte-Famille (according to the Lovell de Montréal 1902-1903 - Street Directory , but 152 according to John Campbell ) which indicates that this house is numbered today 3702).

(For points 2 and 3, the precise addresses are not known)

Extract from a plan of 1898 . It was rotated 90 ° clockwise in relation to reality: Mount Royal, normally located to the west, is placed at the upper limit of the image; the St. Lawrence River, located to the east, is towards the bottom of the plane.

Sources :

To be continued...

His workplace: the Macdonald Physics Building

Workplace
17963778013336366.jpg

  Extract Rutherford and the Nature of the atom , by Edward Neville da Costa Andrade , page 57.

  The physics laboratory - "the best of its kind in the world," Rutherford commented - was very well supplied with apparatus and generously supported by a millionaire named Sir William Macdonald, who was a curious character.

   Although so rich, he lived on £ 250 a year, so that he thought professors should be comfortable on £ 500 a year, the stipend that they all received at McGill. Macdonald, a wholesale tobacconist who had made all his money out of tobacco, "cash before delivery", very much disliked smoking, which he considered a filthy habit.

  A.S. Eve, who worked with Rutherford at McGill and afterward became professor of physics there, tells how one day in 1903 Rutherford rushed into his room breathless, saying, "Open the windows, put away your pipes, hide your tobacco." To the reply: "All right, but what is the trouble?" he rejoined: “Hurry up! Macdonald is coming round the laboratory".

    Yet it was the smoking of tobacco that enabled Macdonald to equip the laboratory and to furnish such things as a liquid air machine and money for the purchase of radium bromide and other laboratory luxuries, as they where required.

    Rutherford's title, and that of his successors at McGill, was "Macdonald Professor of Physics".

The Macdonald Physics Building (currently Macdonald-Stewart Library on the McGill University campus)

Source: " Virtual McGill "

sir william macdonald.jpg

Sir William Christopher Macdonald (Source: " McGill University: History of Macdonald College "

The Macdonald Physics Building entrance.
17883098347770035.jpg

The Macdonald Physics Building team in 1899

Ernest Rutherford is completely to the right; Harriet Brooks is in the center.

Source: AIP

The current aspect of the portico where the team photo was taken in 1899

Montreal MacGill Campus Winter 1900 - fr
Montreal McGill Campus - Lower part 1946

Amphithéâtre, MacDonald Physics Building, 1893

Source : Musée McCord

McGill campus around 1900

Source: McGill Yearbook 1898 , pages 30-31

  • The buildings on the left are the Redpath Libray and the Redpath Museum

  • In the axis of the central avenue stands the arts department

  • On the right line up the departments of physics, chemistry and engineering. Only the first (the Macdonald Physics Building) is clearly visible, with its steeple and turret.

Map source: McGill Library , blog post "Future medical students, welcome to McGill!", December 22, 2017 by Tim Klähn

Lecture theatre MPB McGill University 18

Les autres sites montréalais

Other locations

Windsor Hotel

In November 1904, Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Rumford Medal, the highest award given to a researcher by the Royal Society .

 

Since 1800, when the first medal was awarded - to the Earl of Rumford himself -, it had rewarded in particular Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Louis Pasteur or, more recently, James Dewar, Oliver Lodge, William Huggins, as well as the Frenchmen Hippolyte Fizeau and Henri Becquerel, the Swede Anders Ångström and the Germans Heinrich Hertz, Wilhelm Röntgen and Philipp Lenard.

Such recognition of his work earned Ernest letters of congratulations from all his acquaintances, in England, New Zealand, but also, of course, in Canada: his colleagues in the departments of medicine or chemistry sent him warm messages, his students (the majority of whom understood nothing from his classes and preferred to have fun in the lecture room) gave him a guard of honor when he arrived at the Macdonald Physics Building one morning, and the board decided to organize a dinner to celebrate him.

Dominion_Square_and_Windsor_Hotel,_Montr

Another anecdote about the Windsor concerns Otto Hahn and another German researcher in residence in Montreal at the same time. However, neither of them could afford to dine in this palace. What exactly describes this excerpt from " Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics", by William R. Shea, page 9.

Hotel Windsor intérieur musee mccord.jpg

The idea was to bring together for this evening the closest collaborators of Rutherford and some high-ranking personalities of the university; ten or twenty people at most. William Macdonald, the institution's benefactor, clearly expressed his disagreement with this project. Rutherford himself explained the situation as follows:

"When Sir William Macdonald heard of these plans, he offered to fund the entire show for as many people as the University wanted. After all, he said, it was his physics building and his professor and he was going to do it in style. The guest list soared to 120. "

To welcome all these beautiful people, and do it "in style", Macdonald set his sights on the Windsor, the most majestic hotel in Montreal and arguably in all of Canada. Marble columns, coffered ceilings, crystal chandeliers, tables abundantly decorated with flowers and luxuriously covered with silverware and fine china, not to mention the elegance of the participants and the orchestra planned to perform in honor of Ernest. A setting far removed from the New Zealand countryside where the new medalist had grown up.

The description given by Ernest comes from a letter he wrote to his wife on December 11, 1904: in fact, at that time, he was alone in Montreal, since May had gone to New Zealand to present to the family the eighth wonder of the world, namely their daughter Eileen.

Two other sentences written by Ernest in another  letter to May and in a message to his mother, Martha Rutherford, are worth reporting here:

Regarding the welcome he received from his students at the entrance to the laboratory:

“My hat, however, still remains of the same dimensions. "

And in conclusion of his report to his mother of the evening at Windsor:

“Of course, I didn't have too much fun as I had to look nice for three hours while speeches describing my virtues were thrown at me. "

Sources :

 

Images :

  • Dominion Square & Windsor Hotel circa 1890 ; source : Wikipédia

  • Dining room, Windsor Hotel, 1916 ; source : McCord Museum

Life in Montreal was inexpensive. A room with breakfast and dinner could be had for 5 dollars a week, and lunch at the university cost 25 cents. But Hahn and his friend Max Levin found that meals at the boarding house hardly provided the energy needed by a research student, so they made a point of dining out at the Windsor Hotel, then the best in town, every Sunday. This cost them a dollar apiece. After a while Hahn and Levin decided to economize on the food, but they would not forsake their Sunday evening beer. When they ordered only beer, they were told that alcoholic beverages could not be served without food. "How about ordering a ham sandwich?" the waiter suggested. They complied and the waiter picked up a sandwich, slightly yellow with age, from a neighboring table and brought it to them before fetching their beer. The two German scientists watched with amusement as "their" sandwich subsequently moved from table to table as new customers arrived.

Other source: Otto Hahn: Autobiographical Notes , In Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March 1967 »

Côte des Neiges

In 1905, Ernest and May bought land in the village of Côte-des-Neiges, west of Mount Royal, an area that was still outside the urbanized area.

His plan was to build a house there, so that little Eileen could grow up outside the pollution of the city. May , for her part, would have appreciated having a garden, rather than the courtyard of their house on rue Sainte-Famille.

But Ernest left Canada two years later and the house in Côte-des-Neiges never rose from the ground.

Finally, after having asked Arthur Stewart Eve to manage his affairs and find a buyer for him, it was he who bought the piece of land in 1911.

Bétail sur le chemin de la Côte-des-Neig

In the correspondence between Rutherford and Eve appear some details concerning this parcel: it was on Cedar Crescent, measured 24,000 square feet, Ernest paid it $ 3,600 and Eve bought it back $ 4,500. He himself had provided Ernest with the elements to justify this increase in the value of the land, linked to the development of Côte-des-Neiges. In Rutherford's biography written by David Wilson, it is specified that the land had a beautiful view on the Lac des Deux Montagnes, at the confluence between the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence River.

Sources:

  • Rutherford.org.nz , site of John Campbell

  • Rutherford, Simple Genius , David Wilson, page 203

  • My Dear Eve - The Letters from Ernest Rutherford to Arthur Eve. Part II - 1909-11 , Montague Cohen, page 124

Picture:

  • Cattle on the Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges Montreal around 1900; source: McCord Museum

bottom of page