Science: Nobel Prizes

The Swedish Academy of Sciences last week agreed that the 1927 Nobel Prize for Physics be divided between Professor Arthur Holly Compton of the University of Chicago and Professor Charles Thomson Rees Wilson of Cambridge University. Both men studied at Cambridge University under Sir Joseph John Thomson, who received the 1906 Nobel Prize for Physics,

Physicist Compton. The freshwater College of Wooster, Ohio, gave Professor Compton his early training in science; his father, Professor Elias Compton (philosophy) at Wooster, gave him the spirit; and his older (by five years less four days) brother, Professor Karl Taylor Compton (physics) at Princeton was his pacemaker. Arthur Holly took his doctor of philosophy degree at Princeton while Karl Taylor was assistant professor of physics there.

Arthur Holly Compton’s researches have been into the nature of electromagnetic waves. Those waves extend in a continuous series from wireless waves, which are 25 metres and more in length, through heat waves, light waves, ultraviolet waves, x-rays, gamma rays. X-rays give off gamma rays. Professor Compton measured them. One is a ten thousandth millionth of an inch long.

Another profound fact Professor Compton discovered. Atoms are made up of a nucleus with a positive charge of electricity and one or more electrons with negative charges. The electrons (they are all the same size no matter what the element) revolve around their nucleus in a symmetrical pattern. Hydrogen, lightest of elements, has only one electron whirling around its nuclear “sun.” Heavy metals, like lead, radium and uranium, have many electrons. In some elements some of the electrons pop away from their atoms. Such elements are radioactive. X-rays can make them pop away violently. When x-rays act so, Professor Compton learned, their wave lengths, thousand millionths of an inch long, change. Roughly, the picture is that of a rowdy butting people on a dance floor. Each time he bumps a dancer he loses a little of his energy; later he has strength enough only to jostle them; finally he goes aimlessly away.

Physicist Wilson. In 1895, when Professor Compton was a demure three-year-old baby at Wooster (he is now 35), Charles Thomson Rees Wilson began his serious study of electromagnetic forces. This was at Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University. Since 1925 he has been Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge.

His first important discoveries concerned the electrical effect of lightning on the earth. The earth is, of course, a great sphere, and carries an enormous charge of negative electricity. About 100 strokes of lightning hit the entire earth every second. Professor Wilson measured their power.

He rigged on the ground a large plate of metal, which was in effect a section of the earth’s surface. When a thundercloud hung over his plate and lightning blazed, he found by means of extremely delicate instruments that the electrical potential of the plate changed. This was the electrical image of what happened in the cloud, one surface (usually the upper) was positively charged, the other negatively. When discharge occurred,

Professor Wilson calculated, the cur rent of electricity amounted to 20 coulombs, that is, 20 amperes per second.

Another feat was to photograph and thus make visible atomic disintegration. How he aid so he demonstrated to the American Chemical Society at their 1926 meeting in Los Angeles. The scientists there knew that in moisture-laden air invisible particles of dust collect moisture until they become visible water vapor. Professor Wilson theorized that ionized molecules in a dust-free, moisture-logged receptacle would also provide foci for water condensation. Into such a chamber he shot alpha particles from an x-ray machine. Drops did collect on the alpha particles.

Significance. The significance of such researches in pure science are usually difficult for the lay mind to appreciate. It is plain, however, that the more people know of the nature of matter, the more they can do with that matter. This truism, Professor Karl Taylor Compton of Princeton (brother of Arthur Holly Compton) elaborated only last month at the Founder’s Day exercises of Lehigh University. Said he: “Inventors in this country have always been popular idols. We tell young school children about the inventions of Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison. We have been blessed by a number of men who had the spark of genius to conceive of a steamboat, a cotton gin, a dynamo or an incandescent lamp and numerous other machines and processes on which so much of life today depends. Nothing in the world is so potent with possibilities as a new idea, and really new ideas are rare and the product of genius. (Not all inventions are of this class. Though I occasionally enjoy Life Saver candies, I do not believe that the invention of the hole in the candy deserved the reputed reward of a million dollars, or that the invention of a blue stripe on kitchen utensils should establish a man in either Wall Street or the Hall of Fame.)

“As I have said, we have always lauded the inventor. But both behind and in front of the inventor is the true research worker. The research worker first makes a fundamental discovery; then he proceeds to investigate it in all its aspects and attempts to explain it in its relations with other known phenomena. Next the inventor sees some way of turning this discovery to some practical account—and this is the step ordinarily called invention. . . .

“The entire industry of electrochemistry is built upon the discoveries of Faraday, a professor at the Royal Institution.

“Joseph Henry, first a teacher in a boys’ school, then professor of physics at Princeton, constructed the first real electromagnet, the first telegraph and printing telegraph, had a wireless set with which his family used to call him from the laboratory to his meals, and most important of all, discovered, jointly with Faraday, the laws of electromagnetic induction which underlie all electric power machinery. And when urged by his friends to press his claims for patent rights he answered that his scientific work was too important to be hampered by attending to such trivial matters.”