Science: Rutherford’s Names

Like many another elderly and distinguished scientist, Britain’s Lord Ernest Rutherford, great formulator of the atom’s electrical structure, has a way of having his way. Few weeks ago he published an article in which he referred to the tripleweight atom of hydrogen, generally called tritium, as “triterium.” When this verbal goblin reached the eye of Dr. Kenneth Claude Bailey, professor of physical chemistry and authority on chemical etymology at University of Dublin, Dr. Bailey promptly took pen in hand and wrote a letter of protest which appeared in Nature last week. Excerpt: “The word ‘deuterium’ [accepted name for the double-weight hydrogen atom] is correctly formed from the Greek deuteros, ‘second,’ but the Greek for ‘third’ is tritos, not triteros. The name which corresponds properly with ‘deuterium’ is clearly ‘tritium,’ and this word is already in use. . . .”

All this reminded connoisseurs of scientific nomenclature of a controversy which willful Lord Rutherford stirred up some time ago after Columbia University’s Harold Clayton Urey had christened doubleweight. hydrogen “deuterium.” Dr. Urey had discovered doubleweight hydrogen and it seemed that he had a right to name it. The nucleus was called the “deuton.” Dr. Rutherford did not like these names, especially “deuton,” which he declared was likely to be confused by Englishmen with “neutron,” particularly if the speaker had a cold. Lord Rutherford was for calling the atom “diplogen” and its nucleus the “diplon,” and a number of British scientists seemed willing to follow his lead, despite a polite but barbed letter which Dr. Urey and his associates rushed off to England posthaste (TIME, Feb. 19, 1934). Peace was restored when Lord Rutherford agreed to accept “deuterium” and the “deuton” was renamed “deuteron.”