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The
1999 Romer Lecture
Roger
Stuewer
University
of Minnesota
"The
Case of the Elusive Particles:
Nuclear Disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna
Controversy"
Scientific controversies
can offer a glimpse through the window of a particular historical period
of how science functions as a process. Scientists holding opposing points
of view in a controversy submit a range of issues to intense scrutiny. Careful
examination of these issues can reveal the interplay of theory, experiment
and observation and how this interplay leads to new scientific knowledge.
The Cambridge-Vienna controversy during 1922 – 1928 centered on the disintegration
of elements (nuclei) by alpha particles triggering the emission of protons.
Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick in Cambridge argued with Hans Pettersson
and Gerhard Kirsch in Vienna over questions involving which elements could
be disintegrated in this way, whether these elusive disintegration protons
could be observed and how the process should be interpreted theoretically.
A web of personal and institutional rivalries became thoroughly entangled with
the scientific issues, raising the stakes in the outcome of the controversy
enormously.
All the questions in this controversy will be examined in the context of 1920s
physics and for their meaning in the larger context of our understanding of
how science functions in an intensely competitive atmosphere.
Thursday, April 22, 8 p.m. Hepburn Auditorium
Return to The Romer Lecture Index
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| © | St. Lawrence University | Department of Physics |
| Revised: 21 Aug 2003 | Canton, NY 13617 |