Repository | Book | Chapter
(1973) The physicist's conception of nature, Dordrecht, Springer.
I am greatly honoured to speak to you on my reminiscences of Lord Rutherford. But this is a very difficult task. At first sight I thought that to speak about the scientific achievements of so great a scientist as Rutherford would be easy. The greater the achievements of a scientist the more exactly and briefly can they be described. Rutherford created the modern study of radioactivity; he was the first to understand that it is the spontaneous disintegration of the atoms of radioactive elements. He was the first to produce the artifical disintegration of the nucleus and finally he was the first to discover that the atom has a planetary system. Each of these achievements is sufficient to make a man a great physicist. But nowadays these achievements and their fundamental values are well known not only to research students but even to schoolboys. Equally we all know the very simple and beautiful classical experiments by means of which Rutherford made his great discoveries.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2602-4_41
Full citation:
Kapitza, P. L. (1973)., Recollections of Lord Rutherford, in J. Mehra (ed.), The physicist's conception of nature, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 749-765.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.