Ernest Rutherford and the Explosion of Atoms. Oxford Portraits in Science Series. By J.L. Heilbron. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003. 1 vol. 139 p. $27.50. ISBN 0-19-512378-6.
Ernest Rutherford and the Explosion of Atoms. Oxford Portraits in Science Series. By J.L. Heilbron. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003. 1 vol. 139 p. $27.50. ISBN 0-19-512378-6.
This volume is torn between being a science reference and a biography. Reference won. The student interested in early research on the atom will use this book to trace the history created by Ernest Rutherford. Black-and-white photos make it a biography, while the drawings of such things as radio-elements, periodic law and bending of alpha particles are purely science reference. This brilliant scientist from a New Zealand flax farm won a scholarship to Cambridge, a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a baron's title. His first professorship at McGill in Canada made him a world leader in the investigation of radioactivity. He discovered the nuclear model of the atom and then he split the atom. Many other famous scientists, including the Curies, are mentioned here. Rutherford's work as the figurehead for the Academic Assistance Council in May 1933, the beginning of Nazi power in Germany, saved 650 teachers and researchers. By 1936 that number had grown to 1,300. A three-page chronology, a three-page glossary and two pages of "further reading" include general works as well as works on Rutherford and his colleagues. Recommended for high schools with strong physics and chemistry departments.