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Scientists and their Discoveries
Christine Hatt
2001 Evans
ISBN 0237521687
62 pages. Hard Cover.
Purchasing Details.
My Comments on This Book
This book has two pages on each of 21 famous scientists, including Ernest Rutherford p32-3. Surprisingly it concentrates on
sub-atomic particles and makes no mention of all of his other discoveries. It makes no mention that he was ever in Canada, where he became world
famous for his discoveries for which he was awarded his Nobel Prize, the first for research work carried out in Canada. His transmutation
work was carried out whilst at Manchester, not at Cambridge. In mentioning that Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, it misses pointing
out that Rutherford proposed that the neutron had to exist back in 1920. Because of such major deficiencies, I cannot recommend this book.
Errors Noted.
p 32 Rutherford first observed small angle scattering when in Canada. At Manchester he asked Geiger to make accurate measurements
of this small angle scattering. It wasn't until he asked Marsden to see if any alphas were scattered from the surface of a metal that
they observed large angle scattering.
p 32 "When Rutherford was back in Cambridge, in 1919, he carried out another major experiment, bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles."
No. He had done this at Manchester in 1917 but didn't publish until after WW1 ceased.
p 33 "Since the 1950s, machines called particle accelerators have been used to break up atomic nuclei." No. This started in 1932 with
the Cavendish linear accelerator.
Reviews
Not known at this stage.
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