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LETTER OF THE WEEK

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I wish to comment on some points in the article about Ernest Rutherford.

Internatio­nally, Rutherford is most famous for his nuclear atom, not splitting the atom. The latter emphasis is peculiar to New Zealand.

He never taught at Canterbury College, although he did do private tutoring. While at the college, he developed a device for detecting very fast current pulses along a wire. At Cambridge University, he used the device to set a world record for the distance – half a mile – over which electrical “wireless” waves were detected.

Rutherford wasn’t on the Admiralty’s Board of Inventions and Research during

World War I but one of 11 scientists on an advisory panel charged with developing ways of detecting submarines.

These points can be found in my biography of Rutherford, Rutherford: Scientist Supreme, and the website rutherford.org.nz. John Campbell Research associate, University of Canterbury (Christchur­ch) Frank Duffield responds: “I stand duly corrected by John Campbell. I would commend his work to any wishing to

learn more about Rutherford.”

The Rutherford article includes a photograph captioned “Rutherford, right, and Niels Bohr”. The man on the left is actually Hans Geiger. The apparatus between the two is that of the “gold foil” experiment, based on which Rutherford argued conclusive­ly that the atom had a nuclear structure. Jim Colvine (Mangawhai Heads) We apologise for the mix-up. – Ed

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