Cambridge and the Cavendish

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger H. Stuewer
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Cavendish Laboratory ◽  
Research School ◽  
Experimental Physics ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Students ◽  
Peter Kapitza ◽  
The University

J.J. Thomson was elected Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge in 1884, and after new degree regulations were instituted in 1895, he led the Cavendish Laboratory to become the leading research school in experimental physics in the world. He relinquished the Cavendish Professorship in 1919 to become Master of Trinity College and was succeeded by his first research student, Ernest Rutherford, who led the Cavendish to become the leading research school in nuclear physics in the world. Rutherford attracted outstanding research students, among them Englishman John Cockcroft and Russian Peter Kapitza, both of whom were perceptive observers of Rutherford’s personality, style, and methods.

Rutherford Centenary Celebrations

1972 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-5
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Cavendish Laboratory ◽  
Radio Observatory ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

In preparation for the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Lord Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., F.R.S., Council, on 5 March 1970, appointed Professor T. E. Allibone, F.R.S., chairman of a panel to make the necessary arrangements. It was proposed that the one-day event at the Royal Society should include the presentation of three invited lectures in the morning and afternoon and a reception during the evening. The day subsequently chosen for the celebration was 28 October 1971. While these arrangements were being made invitations were received for the participants to visit the University of Cambridge, the Science Research Council’s Rutherford Laboratory and the U.K.A.E.A.’s Culham Laboratory and these visits were included in the programme of events on 27 and 29 October. At Cambridge a morning visit to the Lord’s Bridge Mullard Radio Observatory was followed by an Open Day in the Cavendish Laboratory with a lecture by Dr J. B. Adams, F. R. S. on Four Generations of Nuclear Physicists , which is printed on page 75 et seq . The Master and Fellows of Trinity College entertained the visitors at dinner in the evening. The Rutherford Laboratory was visited on the morning of 29 October and the Culham Laboratory in the afternoon of the same day.

An Essay in Critical Biography—Charles Churchill

PMLA ◽  
1920 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Beatty
Keyword(s):  
Personal Information ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Original Material ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The World ◽  
New Material ◽  
Edinburgh Review ◽  
The University ◽  
National Biography

A writer in The Annual Register, soon after the death of Charles Churchill, gave to the world the first account of his life; this was followed by The Genuine Memoirs of Mr. Charles Churchill. To Bell's edition of the poet's works is prefixed a life of the author by Doctor Johnson; this does not add anything new. Kippis, in his Biographia Britannica, followed most of the inaccuracies of the first biographer, but added some new material from his personal information. Anderson used these sources in the British Poets (1795). Robert Southey in his Life of Cowper, and William Tooke in an edition of Churchill's Works (1804) made more elaborate studies of the poet's life, but, unfortunately, were satisfied with earlier biographies or neglected to give careful references to original material. John Forster, in The Edinburgh Review (1845) pointed out many of Tooke's inaccuracies. Every biographer of Churchill from Chalmers in his English Poets to Leslie Stephen in The Dictionary of National Biography, followed Tooke, or Tooke modified by Forster. In 1903, R. F. Scott in his Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, made several valuable contributions to our knowledge about the early career of the satirist. Ferdinand Putschi, in Charles Churchill, sein Leben und seine Werke (1909), had not seen Mr. Scott's book, and followed the earlier biographers.

The Crocodile and the Elephant

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-316
Author(s):  
A. R. Mackintosh
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Gold Medal ◽  
Niels Bohr ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
Mcgill University ◽  
Peter Kapitza ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

In 1907 Ernest Rutherford (later named ‘The Crocodile’ by Peter Kapitza), 36 years old and already a world–famous physicist, moved from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, to the University of Manchester, England. In the same year Niels Bohr (later known by some as ‘The Elephant’––he was one of the very few non–royal recipients of the Order of the Elephant), a 22–year–old student at the University of Copenhagen, received the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy for his first research project, an experimental and theoretical study of water jets. During the next 30 years, until Rutherford's death in 1937, these two great scientists dominated quantum physics. Rutherford was the father of nuclear physics; together they founded atomic physics; and, with their students and colleagues, they were responsible for the great majority of the decisive advances made in the inter–war years. This lecture tells the story of the development in quantum physics, and makes some comparisons between Bohr and Rutherford–as men and scientists–drawing especially on their extensive correspondence between 1912 and 1937, the material that Bohr gathered in connection with the publication in 1961 of his Rutherford Memorial Lecture, the interviews that he gave just before his death in 1962, and other published and unpublished material from the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen.

5 Models of the world: from perception to hallucination

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
pp. e2.3-e2
Author(s):  
Paul Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Model Building ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Consultant Psychiatrist ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
The Brain

Paul Fletcher is Wellcome Investigator and Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He is also Director of Studies for Preclinical Medicine at Clare College and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. He studied Medicine, before carrying out specialist training in Psychiatry and taking a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. He researches human perception, learning and decision-making in health and mental illness.We do not have direct contact with external reality. We must rely on messages from the sense organs, conveying information about the state of the world and our bodies. These messages are not easy to decipher, being noisy and ambiguous, but from them we have to construct models of the world. I will discuss this challenge and how we are very adept at creating a model of reality based on achieving a balance between what our senses are telling us and our expectations of what should be the case. This is often referred to as the predictive processing framework.Relying on this balance comes at a cost, rendering us vulnerable to illusions and biases and, in more extreme cases, to creating a reality that diverges from that experienced by others. This can arise for a variety of reasons but, at the root, I suggest, lies the nature of the brain as a model-building organ. Though this divergence from reality – psychosis – often seems inexplicable and incomprehensible, I suggest that a few core principles can help us to understand it and offers ways of thinking about how phenomena like hallucinations can be understood. Interestingly, the framework suggests ways in which apparently similar phenomena like hallucinations can arise from distinct alterations to the function of a predictive processing system.

Percy Goom, 1865 - 1931

1932 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-64
Keyword(s):  
Trinity College ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
American Students ◽  
The University

Professor Percy Groom was bom in 1865, and was educated at Mason College, Birmingham, and later at the University of Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner at Trinity College. He took Botany as his chief subject in the Tripos (part ii) and subsequently was elected to a Frank Smart Studentship at Caius College. He spent some time in Germany, attaching himself to the University of Bonn at the time when the School of Botany there was under the direction of the eminent Professor Strasburger, who was attracting many English and American students to wrork under him. Here he enjoyed the friendship of the keen band of assistants whom Strasburger had gathered round him, and notably that of A. F. W. Schimper who greatly influenced him in his outlook on botanical science.

Sir Nevill Francis Mott, C. H. 30 September 1905–8 August 1996

1998 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 315-328
Author(s):  
Brian Pippard
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Cavendish Laboratory ◽  
Experimental Physics ◽  
North West ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
The North ◽  
Research Students ◽  
H 30

There is a long sequence of photographs in the Cavendish Laboratory showing the research students and staff every year from 1897; the 1902 photograph has J.J. Thomson in the middle, and includes Charles Francis Mott and Lilian Mary Reynolds, who were married in 1904 and whose son was Nevill Francis Mott. Charles was unlucky in his research project, which gave him no encouragement to continue, but he had a successful career, first as senior science master at Giggleswick, and then as Director of Education in the north–west of England, ultimately as Director for Liverpool. Miss Reynolds had been a star pupil of Cheltenham Ladie's College and at Cambridge was the best woman mathematician of her year, being classed equal with the eleventh wrangler. She was not at home in experimental physics—her heart was in applied mathematics—and after marriage, as her two children grew up, she devoted herself to social work. It is clear, from the loving memoir that her husband wrote and had published privately after her death, that she retained an active intelligence to the end.

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