Persistent Genius (The Charismatic World of Marie Curie)

Author: [US] Goldsmith
Publisher:
Publish Date: Not available
Features: Manya Sk?odowska timidly hands over her high school medal to her father, having been awarded the title of Best Student in 1883. At that time, an 11-year-old boy named Ernest Rutherford stood at the door of a farmhouse in New Zealand, watching a storm approaching in the distance. His father was also woken by the thunder and came downstairs to accompany his son. What was he doing? Ernest replied that he had learned to calculate the distance of the storm center from them by measuring the interval between lightning and thunder. The farmer, who had been growing potatoes all his life, had 12 children, and Ernest was one of them. Until then, his experience was similar to that of Marie Curie in his youth, and he was considered somewhat dull by others. He received his education at home, and at the age of 11, he could only read but not write. At the age of 12, he was fortunate enough to encounter one of the few talented teachers he would meet in his life, who inspired his interest in learning. After receiving his first scholarship, he told his mother, "I have dug out my last potato." In 1898, Marie Curie was fully immersed in her thesis, and Rutherford arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In New Zealand, chemistry and physics were not highly valued, so he was one of only three students at the University of Nelson (also translated as "Nelson") who had taken these courses. However, he was determined to make science his lifelong career. Rutherford was then 20 years old and became interested in the discoveries of the German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Hertz demonstrated that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted through space. Meanwhile, Marconi's research work utilized such waves to create a wireless transmission system, though he had not yet developed an effective receiver. Rutherford thought that if a device were magnetized and demagnetized intermittently using an electric current, it would be very sensitive to these waves and become an excellent receiver. In early experiments, he made a coil of copper wire and placed a group of sewing needles at its center, then continuously varied the current to pass through the center of the coil. This simple device was very effective in receiving radio waves. Rutherford's experiments, like Marie Curie's, were successful under the guidance of a creative and rational clarity. J. J. Thomson heard about Rutherford's research and offered him a position. Rutherford borrowed money to buy the cheapest ship ticket to England. He hoped to sell his wireless device there and earn enough money to marry his fiancée, Mary Newton. Thomson told Rutherford that such vulgar thoughts about money were "shameful" and not worth a true scientist's attention. (Mary Newton had to wait another five years before Rutherford considered himself financially stable enough to marry her.) Thomson's advice to Rutherford also stemmed from his own ideas. A year earlier, Crookes observed that when a high-voltage current passed through his invented vacuum tube, it caused a discharge of cathode rays, but no scientist at the time could determine the composition of these rays. Thomson hypothesized that these rays came from smaller particles within the atom. He conducted three experiments: The first experiment used a magnet to prove that the charge in the rays could not be distinguished from the rays themselves. In the second experiment, by creating an electric field in a vacuum tube, he was able to bend the cathode rays. In the third experiment, he measured the energy contained in the rays and calculated the ratio of mass to charge. P57-58