At a Symposium on the History of Nuclear Physics, the distinguished Caltech astrophysicist and recent president of the American Physical Society, Willy Fowler, was asked to comment on the concept of internationalism in science. ‘There are nationalistic tendencies, to be sure’, he responded, ‘but they are subordinated to scientists’ love of travel’. By and large, nationalistic tendencies have been suppressed, if not in favour of hedonism, then surely in deference to hymns of praise to the brotherhood of science.
I am very privileged to be the first Rutherford Memorial Lecturer, and particularly so because I have been able to come to Rutherford’s homeland and to this city of Christchurch to pay this tribute to his genius. I have been fortunate in many things in my life, but most of all in working first as a student and then as a colleague of this great countryman of yours, for a period of 15 years. The history of Nuclear Physics is very largely the history of the work of Rutherford and his schools. You will remember that he left New Zealand in the summer of 1895 with an 1851 Studentship to Cambridge to work under Professor J. J. Thomson. Already, in the first term, he gave a lecture to the Cavendish Physical Society on his early work on electromagnetic rays. He received radio signals at ranges of half a mile and might have been a great pioneer in wireless had he continued in this field. ‘There is a rabbit here from the Antipodes’, wrote a Cambridge scientist ‘and he is burrowing mighty deep.’ Fortunately for science Rutherford turned to work in the new field of radioactivity which had been opened up by Becquerel’s discovery that pitchblende gave out radiations which could fog a photographic plate. After a year in the Cavendish he wrote to his fiancée, Mary Newton—now Lady Rutherford—whom we are honoured to have with us to-night:
Notes on the history of nuclear physics