Biographical encyclopedia
[996] RUTHERFORD SCHAUDINN [997]
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[996] RUTHERFORD SCHAUDINN
(Scintillations of the sort used by Rutherford in his scientific work were put to use in industry in the following decade. Zinc sulfide, containing a trace of radium, was used on watch faces to create luminous figures that could be seen at night. This worked well except that the women painting the figures ab sorbed traces of the radium and came down with serious, slowly fatal cases of radiation sickness. The practice was dis continued and the dangers of radioac tivity were made clear.) In 1917 Rutherford got to work in earnest on quantitative measurements of radioactivity. He allowed alpha particles from a bit of radioactive material to shoot through a cylinder into which he could introduce certain gases. When he introduced oxygen, the number of scin tillations fell off as the gas absorbed some of the alpha particles before they could reach the zinc sulfide screen. With hydrogen in the cylinder, partic ularly bright scintillations were pro duced. This was because the nucleus of the hydrogen atom consisted of single protons and these were knocked forward by the alpha particles. When the protons collided with the screen, the bright scin tillations were produced. And yet, when nitrogen was intro duced into the cylinder, although the alpha particle scintillations were reduced in number, occasional scintillations of the hydrogen type appeared. The conclu sion could only be that alpha particles were knocking protons out of the nuclei of the nitrogen atoms. What was left of the nuclei had to be those of oxygen atoms.
Rutherford was thus the first man ever to change one element into another as a result of the manipulations of his own hands. He had achieved the dream of the alchemists. He had also demonstrated the first man-made “nuclear reaction.” However, only one alpha particle in about 300,000 interacted with the nuclei, so it wasn’t a very practical form of transmutation. By 1924 Rutherford had managed to knock protons out of the nuclei of most of the lighter elements. Rutherford accepted a professorship of physics at Cambridge in 1919 and, in that year, succeeded J. J. Thomson as di rector of the Cavendish Laboratory. He was president of the Royal Society from 1925 to 1930. He was knighted in 1914 and was created Baron Rutherford of Nelson (after his birthplace) in 1931. This made it possible for him to take a seat in the House of Lords. After 1933 he was strongly anti-Nazi in his sympathies and was active in ar ranging to help Jewish scientists forced out of Germany. He drew the line at personally helping Haber [977], however. Rutherford felt that Haber’s develop ment of gas warfare put him outside the pale.
In 1933 he expressed himself as quite doubtful that the vast energy of the atomic nucleus, as made evident in radio activity, could ever be controlled by man. He called the notion “moonshine.” In this he was overly conservative (as he was in his reluctance to accept Einstein’s [1064] theory of relativity). However, he died two years before the discovery of uranium fission by Hahn [1063] and so he was not to know how wrong he was in this respect. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Newton [231] and Kelvin [652]. [997] SCHAUDINN, Fritz Richard (show'din) German zoologist
September 19, 1871 Died: Hamburg, June 22, 1906 Schaudinn, the son of an inspector of stud farms, obtained his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1894. His re searches extended from the fauna of the Arctic (where he traveled in 1898 as a member of an exploratory expedition) to the parasites of tropical disease, where he was the first to show that dysentery was caused by an amoeba and that hook worm infection occurs through the skin. His short life was crowned in 1905 by the discovery of the organism (Spiro-
seemed to break the log jam surrounding the disease that had terrorized Europe
[998] CANNON
L ANGEVIN [1000] since (according to legend) it was brought back from the New World by Columbus’ [121] sailors four centuries before. A year later, Wasserman [951] devised his diagnostic method for the disease and three years after that, Ehr lich [845] and his team had discovered a specific therapy for the disease. Schau- dinn did not live to see this. [998] CANNON, Walter Bradford American physiologist Born: Prairie du Chien, Wiscon sin, October 19, 1871 Died: Franklin, New Hampshire, October 1, 1945 Cannon graduated from Harvard in 1896 and got his medical degree there in 1900. He was the first to use Roentgen’s [774] X rays for physiological purposes. To do this, he devised a bismuth meal, a suspension of material of high atomic weight which was harmless and which was opaque to X rays. After such a meal, the intestinal system would stand out as white against a black background, under X rays, and for the first time men could see the body’s soft internal organs on display while the outer skin remained intact. In the days before World War I this created a sensation indeed. After the war, Cannon studied the manner in which the body met emer gency stresses, having been led to this by his study of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock among wounded soldiers. He de veloped the notion of homeostasis, that is, the effort by the body to maintain a stable internal environment despite fluc tuations (within reason) of the outside environment. Primarily responsible for this were the various hormones, particu larly adrenaline. Studying the nerve endings particularly influenced by adrenaline, Cannon discov ered that they secreted an adrenaline- resembling .compound even under nor mal nonemergency conditions. Since these nerve endings belonged to what was called the sympathetic nervous sys tem, he called the compound “sym- pathin.”
[999] TSCHERMAK VON SEYSE- NEGG, Erich (cher-mahk'fun-zy'- zuh-nek) Austrian botanist Born: Vienna, November 12, 1871
Died: Vienna, October 11, 1962 Tschermak von Seysenegg was the son of a professor of mineralogy at the Uni versity of Vienna, who had been en nobled. Tschermak studied at the Uni versity of Vienna himself and obtained his Ph.D. in botany in 1896. In 1898 Tschermak began experiments on the hybridizing of peas and by 1900 had worked out Mendel’s [638] laws of inheritance without knowing at first that Mendel had done it thirty-three years be fore. Like De Vries [792] and Correns [938], he recognized and accepted Men del’s priority and published his own work only as confirmation. [1000] LANGEVIN, Paul (lahnzh-vanO French physicist Born: Paris, January 23, 1872 Died: Paris, December 19, 1946 Langevin, the son of an appraiser, was a great-great-grandnephew of Pinel [338] on his mother’s side. In the late 1890s Langevin went to Cambridge to study under J. J. Thomson [869] and then he returned to the Sor bonne for his Ph.D. in 1902 under Pierre Curie [897], In 1904 he obtained a professorship in physics at the Collège de France. He popularized Einstein’s [1064] the ories for the French public as Eddington [1085] did for the English and American publics. He also considered paramag netism and diamagnetism, phenomena displayed by substances that are weakly attracted and weakly repelled (respec tively) by a magnetic field. Faraday [474] had noticed the phenomenon in 1845 and coined the words. However, in 1905 Langevin first interpreted it in the modem manner on the basis of the elec tron’s electric charges within the atom. The work for which he is most re nowned was the use of ultrasonic wave 6 3 8
[1001] TRAVERS
MOULTON [1003] lengths (sound frequencies too high to be heard). These could be produced by Pierre Curie’s piezoelectric effect. Radio circuits had been developed in the first decades of the twentieth century that could shift potentials quickly enough to make crystals vibrate fast enough to pro duce sound waves with frequencies in the ultrasonic range. Such ultrasonic sound could far more easily be reflected from small objects than ordinary sound could, and it was Langevin’s intention during World War I to develop this into a device for the de tection of submarines (“echo location”). Actually, by the time he had it working, the war was over, but the principle forms the basis of modem sonar. In sonar, ultrasonic sound waves are now used for the detection not only of sub marines but of the contours of the ocean bottoms, of the presence of schools of fish, and so on. Langevin was an outspoken anti-Nazi and, during the war, suffered an eclipse under the puppet Vichy regime. For a time he was imprisoned, but he escaped to Switzerland, was restored to his posts in 1944, and lived to see his homeland free again. [1001] TRAVERS, Morris William (trav'erz) English chemist Born: London, January 24, 1872 Died: Stroud, Gloucestershire, August 25, 1961 Travers, the son of a physician, gradu ated from University College, London, in 1893. He intended to become an organic chemist but in 1894 he began work with Ramsay [832] and shared in the exciting labor of isolating the noble gases. Mak ing use of a large quantity of liquid air supplied them by Hampson [851], Travers located krypton in May 1898. That same year, Travers obtained his doctoral degree, and in 1903 he accepted a professorial post at University College. From 1927 to 1937 he was at Bristol University. In 1956 Travers published a biography of Ramsay. [1002] URBA1N, Georges (iir-bahn') French chemist
Urbain, the son of a chemistry profes sor, was a latter-day Renaissance man, for in addition to his work in chemistry, he indulged in painting, sculpture, and music in a reasonably proficient manner. He worked for Friedel [693] and re ceived his Ph.D. from the University of Paris in 1899. His outstanding scientific work was conducted on the rare earth el ements. In 1907, just ahead of Auer [890], he isolated the last of the stable rare earths, which he named lutetium, after the village that stood on the site of Paris in Roman times. In 1911 he thought he had isolated still another element, which he called celtium and which he believed fitted under zirconium in the periodic table. When Urbain heard in 1914 of Mose ley’s [1121] method of characterizing elements by the X rays they could be made to emit, he traveled to Oxford in order to bring the young Englishman a mixture of rare earths for analysis. With out trouble Moseley identified the rare earths in the mixture; orthodox chemical methods would have been long, pains taking, and uncertain. Furthermore a sample that Urbain believed to contain celtium proved to be nothing more than a mixture of known rare earths. (The true element located under zirconium was found by Hevesy [1100] a decade later.) Urbain was terribly impressed with all this and helped popularize the work of the so-soon-to-be-dead Moseley through out the world of chemistry. [1003] MOULTON, Forest Ray (mohl'- tun) American astronomer Born: Le Roy, Michigan, April 29, 1872
Died: Wilmette, Illinois, Decem ber 7, 1952 Moulton graduated from Albion Col lege in 1894 and earned his Ph.D. in 639 [1004] SITTER
RUSSELL [1005] 1899 at the University of Chicago. He spent the remainder of his professional life there. He collaborated with Chamberlin [766] in advancing the planetesimal theory of the origin of the solar system. When the smaller satellites of Jupiter were discovered by Nicholson [1151] and others in the early decades of the twentieth century, Moulton suggested they might be captured asteroids. This theory is now widely accepted among as tronomers. [1004] SITTER, Willem de Dutch astronomer Born: Sneek, Friesland, May 6, 1872
Died: Leiden, November 20, 1934 Sitter, the son of a judge, obtained his doctorate at the University of Gro ningen, where he had studied under Kap- teyn [815]. Then, at the invitation of Gill [763], he spent the period from 1897 to 1899 at the Cape Observatory in South Africa.
He became professor of astronomy at the University of Leiden in 1908 and its director in 1919. He was one of the first to become seriously interested in Ein stein’s [1064] theory of relativity. It was he whose reports reached Eddington [1085] in England and popularized the theory there, paving the way for the En glish expedition to test general relativity during the eclipse of 1919. Sitter did not agree with Einstein’s conception of the universe in one re spect. Because light was bent by gravita tional forces, any ray of light eventually curved and curved and reached its start ing point once more: the universe consisted of “curved space.” To Einstein, at first, the radius of curvature was con stant, and the universe was static, not changing in size. Sitter maintained that the general theory could more properly be interpreted to show that the curvature was constantly growing less and that the curved universe was constantly expand ing like a growing bubble. The spectra of the distant galaxies, as interpreted by Hubble [1136], bore this out and in the end Einstein too was converted to Sit ter’s view. Sitter calculated the universe to have a radius of two billion light-years and to contain eighty billion galaxies, but this, like all earlier estimates of the size of the universe since prehistoric times, proved to be overconservative. [1005] RUSSELL, Bertrand Arthur Wil liam Russell, 3d Earl English mathematician and philos opher
May 18, 1872 Died: Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, February 2, 1970 Russell’s parents died by the time he was four, and his grandfather John Rus sell took charge. This grandfather had been prime minister of Great Britain from 1846 to 1852 and from 1865 to 1866, and was created 1st Earl Russell in 1861. He died in 1878 and Bertrand was left with his grandmother. Young Bertrand led a lonely, unhappy childhood in the puritanical home of his grandparents. He entered Cambridge in 1890, where George Darwin [777] was one of his teachers and where Whitehead [911] grew interested in the young man. Bertrand Russell inherited the earldom from his elder brother in 1931 but pre ferred not to use the title. This was all of a piece with his strong and unconven tional liberal views, which led him to fight for women’s suffrage, for instance. Through much of his life he had been a militant pacifist (which is not the contra diction in terms it seems) and for this lost his college post during World War I and spent some months in jail in 1918. He ran for Parliament (unsuccessfully) on the Labour ticket in 1922. His views on social problems were equally unconventional. From 1927 to 1932 he ran a school for children in which advanced notions of discipline (or, rather, lack of it) were used. In 1940, when, during a temporary stay in the United States, he was appointed to 6 4 0
[1006] TSVETT
CURTIS [1007] the staff of the City College of New York, his published views on sex were used by the clergy and the Hearst press to arouse a storm of disapproval against him. His appointment was pusillani mously withdrawn as a result by a state court order. During the stressful times before World War II, Russell retreated from pacifism, but with the coming of the nu clear race and the cold war of the 1950s, he returned to his earlier views with greater force than ever. In his nineties this militant patriarch led the forces of neutralism in England and constantly defied the government, confident that it would not choose to jail him (although it did for a short while in 1961). Russell heard Peano [889] lecture in mathematics in 1900 and grew interested in the basic logic of mathematics. In 1902 he made his first mark in this di rection when he wrote to Frege [797], pointing out what has since become a fa mous logical paradox and asking how Frege’s new system of mathematical logic would handle it. Frege was forced to admit that his system fell short and so added a footnote to his two-volume work that nullified all that had gone before. Russell then went on to try to answer his own question by setting up a still bet ter system of logic on which to base mathematics. This effort reached its cli max in the publication from 1910 to 1913 in collaboration with Whitehead of
cent of Newton’s [231] great work. This was the most ambitious and nearly suc cessful effort to make all of mathematics completely rigorous, but as Godel [1301] was to show twenty years later, all such efforts were doomed to failure. Russell wrote numerous books and in 1950 he received the Nobel Prize in lit erature.
[1006] TSVETT, Mikhail Semenovich Russian botanist Born: Asti, Italy, May 14, 1872 Died: Voronezh, June 26, 1919 Tsvett, born of a Russian father (a civil servant) and an Italian mother, lost his mother soon after birth. He studied at Geneva University in Switzerland and in 1896 went to St. Petersburg, Russia, to do research. In 1902 he settled in Warsaw, then part of the Russian em pire. The German invasion of Russia in 1915 pushed the institute with which he was associated eastward and he finally came to rest in Voronezh. His name, often spelled Tswett (the German “w” is pronounced “v”), means “color” in Russian, which is an interest ing coincidence in view of the nature of his most important scientific achieve ment.
Tsvett’s major work was on plant pig ments and in 1903 he had his great in spiration. He let a mixture of the pig ments trickle down a tube of powdered alumina. The different substances in the pigment mixture held to the surface of the powder with different degrees of strength. As the mixture was washed downward, the substances separated, those holding with less strength being washed down farther. In the end, the mixture was separated into colored bands. The fact of separation was “writ ten in color” and Tsvett named the tech nique chromatography (which means “written in color” in Greek). His report, in Russian, roused no interest and his work was forgotten until the method was reintroduced by Willstatter [1009] after Tsvett’s death. [1007] CURTIS, Heber Doust American astronomer Born: Muskegon, Michigan, June 27, 1872 Died: Ann Arbor, Michigan, January 9, 1942 Curtis was educated at the University of Michigan, earning his master’s degree in 1893. He became a professor of Latin and Greek at Napa College in California and there he grew interested in a tele scope, was won over to astronomy, and in 1896 transferred his professorship to that subject. In 1898 he began to work at Lick Ob servatory and in 1902 he earned his doc 641
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