The University of Canterbury honours Ernest Rutherford

Jeff Field

The first major national exhibition on Ernest Rutherford, University of Canterbury’s most distinguished graduate, first opened at the Arts Centre, the Canterbury College site where he completed three degrees and undertook his first original experiments. A unique feature of the Christchurch exhibition was the Arts Centre venue where visitors could experience the environment in which Rutherford studied and conducted research in the 1890s, including visiting his research den and the 19th century lecture room in which he was taught.

The exhibition brings together unique historical artefacts from Canterbury, McGill and Cambridge universities, Nelson College and other sources, and combines them with multi-media and hands-on scientific interactives. Authentic film and audio recordings of Rutherford, letters, records and other archives and historic objects help tell his life story; original and facsimile science equipment and a host of interpretative panels explain and demonstrate the science behind Rutherford’s achievements.

University of Canterbury artefacts on display include: the collection of 36 medals and awards made to Rutherford and gifted to his alma mater by his widow; the letter from Rutherford and Jack Erskine requesting use of the robing room (now known as Rutherford’s Den) for their experimentation; his letter acknowledging the University’s congratulations on the award of the Nobel Medal in chemistry in 1908; and two lampshades made from some of Rutherford’s degree diplomas.

Among original items from other sources are the Rutherford family christening gown, his spectacles and tobacco pouch, school reports and photographs, honours boards from Havelock school-days, job applications and a handwritten CV from McGill University.

A quarter of a million visitors are expected to view the exhibition during its two-year, eight-city New Zealand tour. A project of the National Science-Technology Roadshow Trust, it ran in Christchurch until 17 September, in Dunedin from 23 September to 10 December, and in Invercargill over the New Year period. It is currently in Palmerston North (24/2 – 13/5), then it will be in Auckland’s Aotea Centre in June/July, and at Te Papa 18/8 to 25/11. It will feature in Hamilton and Nelson in 2002.

Article adapted with permission from the Chronicle, University of Canterbury GPR survey pinpoints location of foundations of the Old Tin Shed

The foundations of the Old Tin Shed, where Canterbury’s most distinguished graduate Ernest Rutherford first studied physics and chemistry, were unearthed at the Arts Centre during Heritage Week in 1999.

The key to the successful dig was a geophysical survey in 1998 by Dr David Nobes (Geological Sciences), who used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to pinpoint the location of the foundation in the Arts Centre’s North Quadrangle.

The anomalous feature identified by Dr Nobes last year was indeed a part of the foundation and the depth at which it was found was very close to that predicted. Excavations revealed a large concrete and brick foundation with a number of fragments of old laboratory equipment.

Dr Nobes was delighted at the find and the success of the geophysical techniques used. The methods used were not intrusive – “we leave only footprints and take only measurements” – and hence well suited to sensitive locations such as archaeological and burial sites.

Because of the Rutherford connection, the search in 1998 and the excavation in 1999 attracted significant national and international media attention. Ernest Rutherford studied at Canterbury in the 1890s, completing three degrees and undertaking his first research before travelling to Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, where he began the research that led to his 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry and his nuclear research. At the time the three-storey corrugated iron building, known as the Old Tin Shed or the Realm of Stinks, was the University’s science laboratory.

Article reprinted with permission from the Chronicle, University of Canterbury Insight into Rutherford the man and scientist

Arthur Williamson

Rutherford: Scientist Supreme (AAS Publications, Christchurch, 1999, 514 pages) is a biography written from the inside. As a physicist working at Canterbury University, Dr John Campbell knows Rutherford’s science and the scientific and academic worlds. He sets out to remedy what he sees as both a lack of recognition of Rutherford’s achievements and the creation of a mythology about the man by the country of his birth.

Campbell gives us much more than Rutherford the scientist. We get an account of the life and times of the Rutherford family and an insight into the way in which the international community of scholars works. The conferences, the visits of scientists from one laboratory to another and the exchanges of information are all there. The excitement of chasing, achieving and developing the consequences of a new discovery are captured. So too is the development of promising young researchers as they move between institutions, problems and mentors, finally themselves becoming elders of the tribe. There are the occasional rivalries such as that revealed in Ramsay’s hogging of Rutherford’s share of the gift (loan) of radium from Vienna. This is all the stuff of which science is made and of which Rutherford’s scientific life is an outstanding example.

Rutherford did not start out as a boy genius outshining all around him. He was an excellent scholar, but his successes, in gaining scholarships for instance, often came at the second attempt. He worked hard, but not too hard, and he grasped and built upon the opportunities that came his way. That he had the potential to become an outstanding experimentalist was recognised by his early teachers in New Zealand, Bickerton in particular, who even then (1883) insisted that his students carry out an original research. Rutherford turned down Bickerton’s suggestion that he examine the possibility of forming organic molecules by electrical discharges in mixtures of inorganic gases ( studies which were still being carried out by others some 80 years later) in favour of research on high frequency electrical oscillations, thus rejecting chemistry in favour of physics and thereby setting the direction that took him to Cambridge and all that followed. One wonders what might have been Rutherford’s contribution to chemistry had he accepted Bickerton’s suggestion.

The work at McGill on radioactive decay series leading to his Nobel Prize award is covered in some detail, as are the reasons for Rutherford’s award being in chemistry rather than in physics. The most outstanding achievement of the Manchester period, the development of the model of the nuclear atom (what some textbooks called the Rutherford-Bohr model) based in Rutherford’s alpha particle reflection experiments and completed by Bohr’s explanation of the planetary electrons, is dealt with rather more briefly than it deserves.

Rutherford’s return to Cambridge in 1919 was accompanied by a change in lifestyle and in responsibilities. Less time was spent in the laboratory and more in administration and public duties.

Rutherford died on 19 October 1937 following unfortunately delayed surgery for a strangulated hernia.

Campbell’s book gives brief portraits of many of Rutherford’s colleagues and their contributions to understanding atomic structure and the place of radioactivity in that understanding. Those who want to know what Rutherford actually did, how it related to the work of others, what it is like to be an academic scientist, of the intrigues and politics of academia and what universities used to be like before we tried to turn them into businesses should read this book. If you want to read about a turn-of-the-century family and their relationship to a successful and world-famous son and his fame, read this book.

John Campbell is to be congratulated on producing such a comprehensive and interesting work, although I think it is unfortunate that the book was not published by the University.

Emeritus Professor Arthur Williamson Dept of Chemical and Process Engineering

[The manuscript was in fact sent to Canterbury University Press but was withdrawn after the author and publisher were unable to agree on the extent and nature of editorial changes.]

Article reprinted with permission from the Chronicle, University of Canterbury