Science & Society: The search for the real Earnest Rutherford*

Every physicist knows the name Rutherford who radically altered our understanding of nature on three separate occasions. Through brilliantly conceived experiments, and with special insight, he explained the perplexing problem of radioactivity as the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (they were not necessarily stable entities as had been assumed since the time of the ancient Greeks), he determined the structure of the atom and he was the world's first successful alchemist (he converted nitrogen into oxygen).

This talk given by John Campbell, however, will cover some of the lesser known aspects of Rutherford's work, including his early wireless signalling, development of what was later improved to be now called the Geiger-Muller tube, his acoustic work for submarine detection during the First World War, the development of particle accelerators and the race to use them, the first use of a coincidence detector, and why he received just one Nobel Prize.
Dr Campbell, a condensed matter physicist at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, is the author of Rutherford Scientist Supreme and www.rutherford.org.nz. During a quarter of a century of research he interviewed many people who worked with Rutherford. He was the convenor of the Rutherford Birthplace Project, Nelson, New Zealand (1990) and the Pickering/Rutherford/Havelock Memorial Plaza at Havelock, New Zealand (2003), and helped design the NZ$100 banknote which features Rutherford (1992). He was the initiator, and for the past decade has run the Ask-a-Scientist Programme for New Zealand schoolteachers. John holds several awards for presenting science to the public.

So, if you want to find out more about Rutherford's work and the man behind the physics come to the seminar: