bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Eamon De Valera, 14 October 1882 - 29 August 1975
Authors: Synge John Lighton
Published: December 2006

Eamon de Valera will go down in history as the man who won independence for Eire (Ireland, in the English language) or the Irish Republic, a political unit covering twenty-six counties of the island. His ambition was to make the whole island a single independent nation, but in that he did not succeed. His personal and political lives have been covered by several biographies, and at the end of this memoir I give references to these and to some other articles and documents bearing on him and on the country he did so much to set in its present form. But the main purpose of this memoir is to explore an enigmatic personality who combined with his more obvious gifts an enduring passion for science, and in particular for mathematics, a passion which led him, at the height of his political power, to act as a patron of learning in general, with the establishment of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies as his most significant achievement.
Geoffrey Emett Blackman, 17 April 1903 - 8 February 1980
Authors: Harley John Laker
Published: December 2006

Geoffrey Blackman was born on 17 April 1903 at Scarsdale Villas, Kensington. His father, Vernon Herbert Blackman (elected F.R.S. in 1913), was then an assistant in the Mycological section of the British Museum (Natural History) where he was responsible for the collections of fungi and the accession of new material. His mother, Edith Delta
née
Emett, who came from a Gloucestershire family, was at the time of her marriage engaged in preparing wax models of biological subjects for the museum. Sir Ray Lankester sent her to see Blackman for advice on the scientific accuracy of her work, and they married in 1901
Charles Drummond Ellis, 11 August 1895 - 10 January 1980
Authors: Hutchison William Kenneth , Gray J. A. , Massey Harrie Stewart Wilson
Published: December 2006

Charles Drummond Ellis died on 10 January in a nursing home in Cookham, after a short illness; he had lived in the district for some 30 years, alone after the death of his wife Paula in 1966. Towards the end of his life he moved into a small house and we believe it was then that he took the decision to destroy all his personal records, papers and letters. He requested that there should be no memorial service, and there appear to have been no surviving relatives. He was a very private person in his later years; yet a man always welcome in any circles in which he moved but seemingly with few close personal friends. His long life and career were marked by unforeseen changes in fortune and direction, and one grievous disappointment, when a post, outside the academic sphere, to which he had devoted all his considerable ability over a period of nine years, was unexpectedly terminated. We are indebted to a few of the surviving contemporaries from the early years and to colleagues of his in the several phases of later years, for invaluable help in the provision of information without which the memoir would be Incomplete.
Norman Feather, 16 November 1904 - 14 August 1978
Authors: Cochran William , Devons Samuel
Published: December 2006

One of the two authors (W. C.) has written of the life and the other (S. D.) primarily of the scientific work and pedagogy of Norman Feather. It has not proved possible with such a subject to keep life and research completely a part and there is inevitably some degree of overlap in the two accounts. We must ask the reader’s indulgence, and hope that, as Feather himself expressed it in a similar situation (1976d), we have avoided ‘mere repetition’. 1. Study and research Norman Feather was born in the schoolhouse at Pecket Well in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 16 November 1904, the eldest son of Samson and Lucy Feather. Both parents came from large families, Samson was the ninth of the ten children of John and Martha Feather of Denholme, Bradford, Yorks, and Lucy was the second of twelve children of Godfrey and Rhoda Clayton of Cleckheaton, Yorks. Feather has written that ‘teaching was in my blood’; not only were his parents both primary school teachers, but a sister of Samson and one brother and three sisters of Lucy also taught in Yorkshire schools. Norman’s sister Phyllis and brother David, however, apparently did not continue the family tradition. Norman himself attended primary school at Holme on Spalding Moor, where his father was headmaster from 1907 to 1933, and where his mother returned to teaching between 1914 and 1933.
Gordon Brims Black McIvor Sutherland, 8 April 1907 - 27 June 1980
Authors: Sheppard Norman
Published: December 2006

As a scientist Gordon Sutherland made, at a critical time, a major contribution to the transformation of infrared spectroscopy from a research technique practised in few laboratories into a powerful and widely used method for analysis and for the determination of molecular structure. A physicist by training, he was happy to be described as a chemical physicist or a biophysicist in relation to different aspects of his researches. Later in his career he was a successful Director of the National Physical Laboratory and then Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He played an active role in British science policy. He died on 27 June 1980, in his seventy-third year, some 3 years after his retirement from the Mastership of Emmanuel College. Although after his graduation from St Andrews University Sutherland spent most of his active life in England or in the United States, he always retained the accent of a Scot, and a very deep affection for his native country. In a characteristically thoughtful way, Sutherland left behind a brief account in his own words of the earlier part of his life and career. A number of substantial quotations from his autobiographical document are included in this memoir.
Cecil Reginald Burch, 12 May 1901 - 19 July 1983
Authors: Allibone Thomas Edward
Published: December 2006

‘Begin at the beginning, go on to the middle, and when you come to the end, stop.’
So began the only book that Cecil Burch wrote,
An introduction to the theory of eddy-current heating
, written jointly with his, and my, friend and collaborator, Neville Ryland Davis, a book as delightful as any technical book I have ever read, clear in exposition and comprehensive in its coverage. Every chapter was prefaced by an apt quotation and the book exhibits the ornateness that characterized all Burch’s writings, letters and speeches, an ornateness based partly on his very wide knowledge of classical literature, but also on what appeared to be a desire to impress. He took a real joy in arresting his audience by his mannerisms and choice of words; indeed his language could be really shocking—he had command of a ‘Works’ vocabulary, which he used without regard to the sensitivity of his listeners or even of their sex. Behind this facade lay a very kindly nature: he always listened to anyone asking for help or advice and would devote time most generously to ensure that his questioner went away fully satisfied but never feeling awed or patronized by a man of high intellect. He was truly loved by all the laboratory assistants who worked with him and was remembered with great affection by all his friends in Trafford Park.
Hans Adolf Krebs, 25 August 1900 - 22 November 1981
Authors: Kornberg Hans Leo , Williamson D. H.
Published: December 2006

Hans Adolf Krebs died in Oxford on 22 November 1981, at the age of 81 and only two weeks after leaving his beloved laboratory for treatment, in hospital, of what he believed was a trivial gastric upset. With his death ended an era of research into intermediary metabolism and its regulation, of which Krebs had been a pioneer, that he had brought to fruition, and to the central feature of which—‘the Krebs Cycle’—his name will surely always be attached. In his Biographical Memoir [111] of his own teacher, Otto Warburg, Hans quoted from the preface of G. N. Lewis & M. Randall’s (1923)
Thermodynamics and the free energy of chemical substances
. There, the edifice of science was likened to a cathedral built by the efforts of many workers but of only a few architects: Hans believed that Warburg was one of those few. Indubitably, Hans Krebs was another.
Andrew McCance, 30 March 1889 - 11 June 1983
Authors: Petch Norman James , Barnard L.
Published: December 2006

Andrew McCance, Chairman of Colvilles Ltd, Glasgow, from 1957 until his retirement in 1965, died on 11 June 1983, aged 94. He will be remembered as a dominant figure in the Steel Industry before nationalization, particularly in Scotland. A remarkable man, he was both an industrial and a scientific leader.
Alfred Spinks, 25 February 1917 - 11 February 1982
Authors: Johnson Alan Woodworth , Rose Francis Leslie , Suckling Charles Walter
Published: December 2006

Alfred Spinks was born in the Fen village of Little port where his family had lived for several generations. The earliest known connection on his mother’s side was an Isaac Harley who was involved in the Little port riots of 1816. He was captured along with four others, tried and executed, at the age of 33. The event is recorded on a stone tablet on the tower of St Mary’s Church in Ely: ‘Here lye interred in one grave the Bodies of William Beamiss, George Crow, John Dennis, Isaac Harley and Thomas South, who were all executed at Ely on the 28 Day of June 1816, having been convicted at the Special Assizes holden there of divers Robberies, during the Riots at Little port in the Month of May in that Year. May there awful fate be a warning to others.’
William Rushton, 8 December 1901 - 21 June 1980
Authors: Barlow Horace Basil
Published: December 2006

William Rushton first achieved scientific recognition for his work on the excitability of peripheral nerve where he filled the gap in the Cambridge succession between Lord Adrian, whose last paper on peripheral nerve appeared in 1922, and Alan Hodgkin, whose first paper was published in 1937. It was on the strength of this work that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948, but then Rushton started his second scientific career, in vision, and for the next 30 years he was dominant in a field that was advancing exceptionally fast. In whatever he was engaged he cut a striking and influential figure, for he was always interested in a new idea and had the knack of finding the critical argument or experiment to test it. He was argumentative, and often an enormously successful showman, but he also exerted much influence from the style of his private discussions and arguments. He valued the human intellect and its skilful use above everything else, and he successfully transmitted this enthusiasm to a large number of students and disciples. His full Personal Record* is too long to reproduce here, but it forms the basis of this account of his family background, education and personal life; I shall quote from it extensively, and shall try to make the full version available to anyone who inquires. It also contains summaries of his scientific work which have proved very useful. The article ‘From nerves to eyes’ (170)† that he wrote for F. O. Schmitt has some of the flavour of his Personal Record, though it is much shorter, and perhaps gives the impression of a more modest and ordinary personality than he in fact possessed. For although he was destructively self-critical and self-doubting, he was not modest nor was he ordinary, and I have tried to convey some of these paradoxical aspects of his character in the quotations that follow.
Vision Research
published a memorial issue for William Rushton (vol. 22, no. 6). This contains an obituary by M. Alpern (1982), the colleague with whom he published more papers than anyone else, and there are eight other articles relevant to Rushton’s work, two of which (Hodgkin 1982; Barlow 1982) contain some personal reminiscences of him as a colleague. In another volume Alpern (1983) and Campbell (1983) give charming and vivid impressions of what it was like to work with him, and D. MacLeod’s Rushton Memorial Lecture (1986) contains more impressions.
John Ashworth Ratcliffe, 12 December 1902 - 25 October 1987
Authors: Budden Kenneth George
Published: December 2006

When Ratcliffe began research in the Cavendish Laboratory in 1924, ‘wireless’, as it was then called, had started its rapid advance to become a major science. The thermionic valve had been coming into use in World War I. The BBC had been formed and broadcasting had started in 1922. The large Post Office transmitter at Rugby, call sign GBR, frequency 16 kHz, was being built in 1923-24. The presence of conducting regions in the upper atmosphere had been surmised from the work of Balfour Stewart on terrestrial magnetism, and the idea of elevated conducting surfaces to explain the propagation of wireless waves to great distances had been used in some mathematical papers. It was as a branch of physics that wireless had the greatest appeal for Ratcliffe. In his final undergraduate year he had attended lectures by E. V. Appleton (later Sir Edward Appleton, F.R.S.) and they impressed him with the fact that wireless covered a very large part of physics and depended on phenomena discovered in the pure research of the physics laboratory. His first book (1929) was entitled
The physical principles of wireless
, and when he later organized a Physical Society conference in Cambridge in 1954 he gave it the title ‘The physics of the ionosphere’. In this way the subject now known as ionospheric physics was launched. Ratcliffe was also deeply interested in the applications of electrical science and in the advance of wireless as a part of electrical engineering, and he was to become President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 1966-67. His teaching and his research were closely linked. He used to say that teaching was his main job and research was a hobby. But he also said that university scientists are paid to teach and promoted for research. He enjoyed lecturing and had the highest reputation for clarity of presentation. His books and papers are models of clear exposition and many of his students would say that in the use of English for scientific explanations he excelled all others.
Victor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian. 18 September 1908–12 August 1996
Authors: Lynden-Bell D. , Gurzadyan V.
Published: December 2006

Ambartsumian's life spanned the whole period of existence of the USSR and illustrates both the difficulties of working under that system and the remarkable talents necessary to surmount them. He founded a flourishing school of astronomy in Armenia and the Byurakan Observatory. Within the Soviet Union his political skills made him a member of the Supreme Soviet and one of the most powerful scientists of his time. In astronomy, he discovered basic results in the theory of the transfer of radiation through matter. He discovered stellar associations and showed that most stars were born in such unbound expanding associations rather than in bound clusters. He came to believe, therefore, that stars were born explosively. Extending this to galaxies, he was the first to emphasize the importance of activity and explosions in the nuclei of galaxies long before quasars and black holes were discovered there. He was a pioneer of astronomical research from Soviet spacecraft.
Louis Essen, O. B. E. 6 September 1908–24 August 1997
Authors: Cook Alan
Published: December 2006

Louis Essen was a modest and somewhat self–effacing man devoted to the pursuit of the highest precision in electrical measurements, and so readily thought otherworldly. He can now be seen to have had the most profound and far–reaching influence on the modern world by his development of the atomic clock upon which almost the whole of today's information technology depends.
Roger Mellor Makins, G. C. B., G. C. M. G., D. L., the 1st Baron Sherfield. 3 February 1904–9 November 1996
Authors: Selborne Lord
Published: December 2006

In the course of a long and highly distinguished life, Lord Sherfield served in the Foreign Office, becoming Ambassador in Washington, was Joint Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Chancellor of the University of Reading, and held many other posts in the public and private sectors. In 1945, when Minister at the British Embassy in Washington, he took responsibility for advising on policy issues related to the nuclear weapons programme. Thereafter he was to remain an enthusiastic and most effective contributor to the advancement of science and technology.
Sir Nevill Francis Mott, C. H. 30 September 1905–8 August 1996
Authors: Pippard Brian
Published: December 2006

There is a long sequence of photographs in the Cavendish Laboratory showing the research students and staff every year from 1897; the 1902 photograph has J.J. Thomson in the middle, and includes Charles Francis Mott and Lilian Mary Reynolds, who were married in 1904 and whose son was Nevill Francis Mott. Charles was unlucky in his research project, which gave him no encouragement to continue, but he had a successful career, first as senior science master at Giggleswick, and then as Director of Education in the north–west of England, ultimately as Director for Liverpool. Miss Reynolds had been a star pupil of Cheltenham Ladie's College and at Cambridge was the best woman mathematician of her year, being classed equal with the eleventh wrangler. She was not at home in experimental physics—her heart was in applied mathematics—and after marriage, as her two children grew up, she devoted herself to social work. It is clear, from the loving memoir that her husband wrote and had published privately after her death, that she retained an active intelligence to the end.
Arthur Ernest Mourant. 11 April 1904 — 29 August 1994
Authors: Misson Gary P. , Clive Bishop A. , Watkins Winifred M.
Published: December 2006

Arthur Mourant had an unusual career in which he managed to combine his first passionate interest in geology and prehistory with his subsequent medical training and interest in the geographical and racial distribution of human blood-groups. Although it was the work associated with blood-groups that was to bring him international recognition, it was undoubtedly the anthropological rather than clinical aspects of blood-transfusion medicine that most appealed to his imagination. He was devoted to his native island of Jersey and throughout his life continued to take a lively and active interest in the geology and archaeology of the island.
Sir Alfred Grenville Pugsley, O.B.E., F.R.Eng. 13 May 1903 — 7 March 1998
Authors: Lord Chilver of Cranfield
Published: December 2006

Alfred Pugsley was one of the leading structural engineering scientists of his generation. Hebrought new concepts of scientific understanding to important areas of structural engineering. His perceptive observation and thought enabled him to make a lasting contribution to the understanding of key factors in designing safe structures. His early work was of great importance to aeronautics; in his later career he contributed significantly to modern civil engineering structures. During his long and fruitful life he made a unique contribution to our understanding of engineering structures, enabling engineers to approach the design of safe structures–both in aeronautics and civil engineering–in more rational and effective ways.
Lord Edward Arthur Alexander Shackleton. 15 July 1911 — 22 September 1994
Authors: The Earl Jellicoe
Published: December 2006

Lord Shackleton was born on 15 July 1911, the youngest of three children and second son of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer. His elder brother, Raymond, died in 1960 and his sister, Cecily, in 1957. The Shackletons, originally a Yorkshire family, settled in County Kildare in the early eighteenth century until Henry Shackleton, the father of Sir Ernest, moved back to England and sent his son to Dulwich College.
André Weil. 6 May 1906 — 6 August 1998
Authors: Serre Jean-Pierre
Published: December 2006

André Weil died in Princeton in August 1998; he was ninety-two years old. His last years were saddened by the loss of his wife Eveline, and by the infirmities of old age; death was perhaps a relief for him.
Sven Otto Hörstadius. 18 February 1898 — 16 June 1996
Authors: Jacobson C.-O.
Published: December 2006

During the past few decades, developmental biology has become one of the most exciting areas of science. This is largely a result of the rapidly growing knowledge of molecular biology, partly resulting from the achievements of earlier generations of embryologists. One of the men of special importance among the embryologists of the twentieth century was Sven Hörstadius. Most of the content in today's biology textbooks describes results from the post – Watson–Crick era. However, few texts exclude figures and facts from Sven Hörstadius's dissertation of exactly seventy years ago. His experiments on sea urchin larvae shed light on a couple of the most central findings in developmental biology, namely that the uneven distribution of the egg–cell contents gives rise to early embryo cells with shifting qualities, and that communication between these cells has an essential role in the differentiation process. In the same way, his achievements on the neural crest and its impact on head development in vertebrates have been of lasting importance.
James Griffiths Howard. 25 September 1927 — 6 October 1998
Authors: Mitchison N.A.
Published: December 2006

In his career James Howard personified the great expansion of immunology that took place in the decades after World War II. Trained as a pathologist and microbiologist—the subjects from which immunology sprang—he became a pioneer of the newly independent subject. He belongs among scientists fortunate enough to participate in the flowering of cellular immunology, a group that includes James Gowans, F.R.S., Morton Simonsen, George Mackaness, F.R.S., Ita Askonas, F.R.S., Leslie Brent, Michael Feldman, Michael Sela and Baruch Benacerraf (and myself). We looked up to Peter Medawar, F.R.S., Peter Gorer, F.R.S., Macfarlane Burnet, F.R.S., and (later) Niels Jerne, F.R.S. We were all good friends, very well aware of one another's strengths and weaknesses, and not slow to compete. Within the group, Howard's specialty lay in the connection between infection and immunity. We started when little was known beyond the fact that the body reacted to invasion by making antibodies against foreign agents: the concept of an immune system hardly existed. When we finished, the half–dozen main types of cell that make up the system had been sorted out, and the subtle interactions between them were largely understood. How the system avoided turning on the body that housed it was understood, and the occasional failure to do so–autoimmune disease–had been delineated. The main features of its genetics had fallen into place, and the system was ready for the application of the molecular genetics that followed. Some of these advances were already being applied to medicine, and others were on the way. Examples include organ transplantation, treatments of autoimmune disease, and the ‘sunburst’ vaccines against childhood infections. James Howard took great pleasure in these achievements, and not just for the considerable part that he himself played. Although he was a man exceptionally well provided with other sources of pleasure, none of his friends was in any doubt that this was his greatest.
Zbigniew Stanislaw Basinski, O.C. 28 April 1928 – 12 August 1999
Authors: Howie Archie
Published: December 2006

Zbigniew Basinski, widely known as Bas, was exposed early in life to turbulent events in Poland, Russia and Palestine. He studied chemistry at Oxford, then performed research in metal physics with Jack Christian (F.R.S. 1975). There he met Sylvia Pugh, his wife and lifelong partner, in an enduring and passionate study of crystal plasticity pursued largely in Canada. Over most of the period since the dislocation concept transformed the problem of explaining crystal weakness into one of explaining crystal strength, Basinski's experimental investigations of the obstacles to dislocation motion surpassed in quality and variety those of any other worker.
Ronald Percy Bell. 24 November 1907 — 9 January 1996
Authors: Cox B.G. , Jones J.H.
Published: December 2006

Ronald Percy Bell, Ronnie Bell to his friends, died on 9 January 1996. A distinguished physical chemist gifted with experimental ingenuity and sharp theoretical insight, he made important contributions to the understanding of proton transfer reactions.
Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs. 11 February 1908 – 11 November 1999
Authors: Laws R.M.
Published: December 2006

Vivian Fuchs's father, Ernst, was German, but he knew virtually nothing of his German forebears. His mother, Violet Watson, was English, but German by marriage. His parents had lived in England since their marriage in 1907 and he was six years old when World War I broke out. Internment of all Germans was ordered and his father was put in a prison camp for aliens on the Isle of Man, and their money and property were confiscated. The family were now very poor but survived on the goodwill of relations; even so he had a happy childhood and did not feel in any way deprived. In 1917 his maternal grandparents died intestate, which led to ‘family strife… much unpleasantness and quite a lot of skullduggery’. His mother inherited half her father's fortune, but as she was an enemy alien it was sequestered by the government and they lived a hand–to–mouth existence for six long years after the war had ended.
Albert Neuberger. 15 April 1908 — 14 August 1996
Authors: Allen Anthony K. , Muir Helen M.
Published: December 2006

Albert Neuberger was born in 1908 in the small Franconian town of Hassfurt, which is in the north of Bavaria. At the time of Albert's birth, the Kingdom of Bavaria was a semiautonomous state of the German Empire.
Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir Knight of the Order of the Nederlandse Leeuw Commander in the Order of Orange Nassau. 15 July 1909 – 4 May 2000
Authors: Hargreaves C.M.
Published: December 2006

We remember Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir, born 15 July 1909, died 4 May 2000. With his powerful intellect and exceptional memory, his strong associative imagination and great feeling for language, and his generous spirit, backed up by a robust physique, he was destined to play a dominant role in the world of science and research, academic and industrial, national and international.
Sir Robert Wilson CBE. 16 April 1927 — 2 September 2002
Authors: Jordan C.
Published: December 2006

Robert Wilson had broad scientific interests that ranged from laboratory and solar plasmas to quasars. In his early career at Harwell he made fundamental studies of the plasma device Zeta, and discovered a group of extreme ultraviolet emission lines that were also present but unidentified in the solar spectrum. Subsequent work at Culham showed that these were due to highly ionized iron. He initiated a programme of observations using stabilized Skylark rockets that led to the discovery of many important emission lines in the solar ultraviolet spectrum and gave new information on the structure of the solar transition region. He was the founder of ultraviolet astronomy in the UK and led the team that provided the S2½68 instrument on the TD–1 satellite. Ultraviolet astronomy became his main interest after his move to University College London. He was the intellectual driving force that eventually led to the outstandingly successful International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), which was the first satellite to be easily accessible to the astronomical community. His interests in astronomy were diverse and, using results from both TD–1 and the IUE, he made significant contributions through his studies of the interstellar medium, hot stars, binary X–ray sources and quasars.
Assessing the role of basic control measures, antivirals and vaccine in curtailing pandemic influenza: scenarios for the US, UK and the Netherlands
Authors: Nuño M , Chowell G , Gumel A.B
Published: December 2006

An increasing number of avian flu cases in humans, arising primarily from direct contact with poultry, in several regions of the world have prompted the urgency to develop pandemic preparedness plans worldwide. Leading recommendations in these plans include basic public health control measures for minimizing transmission in hospitals and communities, the use of antiviral drugs and vaccination. This paper presents a mathematical model for the evaluation of the pandemic flu preparedness plans of the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands. The model is used to assess single and combined interventions. Using data from the US, we show that hospital and community transmission control measures alone can be highly effective in reducing the impact of a potential flu pandemic. We further show that while the use of antivirals alone could lead to very significant reductions in the burden of a pandemic, the combination of transmission control measures, antivirals and vaccine gives the most ‘optimal’ result. However, implementing such an optimal strategy at the onset of a pandemic may not be realistic. Thus, it is important to consider other plausible alternatives. An optimal preparedness plan is largely dependent on the availability of resources; hence, it is
country-specific
. We show that countries with limited antiviral stockpiles should emphasize their use therapeutically (rather than prophylactically). However, countries with large antiviral stockpiles can achieve greater reductions in disease burden by implementing them both prophylactically and therapeutically. This study promotes alternative strategies that may be feasible and attainable for the US, UK and the Netherlands. It emphasizes the role of hospital and community transmission control measures in addition to the timely administration of antiviral treatment in reducing the burden of a flu pandemic. The latter is consistent with the preparedness plans of the UK and the Netherlands. Our results indicate that for low efficacy and coverage levels of antivirals and vaccine, the use of a vaccine leads to the greatest reduction in morbidity and mortality compared with the singular use of antivirals. However, as these efficacy and coverage levels are increased, the use of antivirals is more effective.
On the spectrum of the spontaneous luminous radiation of radium. Part IV.–Extension of the glow
Authors: Huggins William , Huggins Margaret Lindsay
Published: December 2006

In our second paper we suggest “whether the
β
-rays, which are analogous to the cathode corpuscles, may not be mainly operative in exciting the radium glow. On this surmise it would be reasonable to expect some little extension of the glow outside the limit of the solid radium itself. We are unable to detect any halo of luminosity outside the limit of the solid radium bromide; the glow appears to end with sudden abruptness at the boundary surface of the radium.” We omitted to state that this conclusion was arrived at by eye observations. The radium was observed in the dark with a lens, and with a low-power microscope. The earlier photographs of the spectrum of the glow were taken, for the purpose of comparison spectra, with the height of the slit reduced by shutters so as to be within the width of the exposed radium bromide, and, therefore, these photographs would not show whether the bright bands of nitrogen extend into the air beyond the radium. Subsequently photographs were taken with the whole height of the slit, and on these we find that all the bands of nitrogen do extend to some little distance outside the radium salt. Our attention at the time being directed to other phenomena of the glow, we did not examine the photographs to see if the nitrogen bands extended beyond the radium.
Experiments on the chemical behaviour of argon and helium
Authors: Cooke W. Ternent
Published: December 2006

Historical and Introductory
. —The discoverers of argon, Rayleigh and Ramsay, showed that when subjected to very severe chemical treatment the gas failed to combine with any other element. Later on Collie and Ramsay also showed that helium resembled argon in being chemically inactive. Moissan and Berthelot both carried out experiments with argon, but neither obtained real proof of any power of argon to enter into chemical combination. It has always been assumed that if union of argon or helium with any other element occurred the action would be strongly endothermic, and experiments have always been framed in such a way as to impart to the system a plentiful supply of energy.
Magnetic behaviour of supraconducting tin spheres
Authors: Mendelssohn K. , Babbitt J. D.
Published: December 2006

Until a year ago it was generally accepted that if a body is made supraconducting while in a magnetic field the lines of magnetic force were "frozen in,"
i. e
., whatever lines of force passed through the body at the time when it became supraconducting remained there afterwards, unaffected by any change in the external field, so long as the body was supraconducting. Meissner and Ochsenfeld, however, showed that this supposition was not true. They measured field strengths in the immediate neighbourhood of cylinders which had been cooled to supraconductivity in an external magnetic field, and found that the field of force was then of the same nature as that to be expected in the neighbourhood of perfectly diamagnetic bodies. Thus it appeared that when a body becomes supraconducting in a magnetic field the lines of force are all pressed out of the body, and the induction inside the body falls to zero. At the same time, however, these authors report on another experiment, the result of which appears to us not entirely in accordance with the assumption that the induction in the whole body became zero. They measured the field strengths inside and outside a hollow cylinder, after it had become supraconducting in a field perpendicular to its axis, and found again that the field strength outside was as if the cylinder were almost perfectly diamagnetic, but the field inside was appreciably the same as if the cylinder were non-supraconducting. We therefore made a number of experiments, hoping to find out more exactly the nature of the phenomenon.
Statistical theory of turbulence-II
Authors: Taylor Geoffrey Ingram
Published: December 2006

The methods described in Part I have been used by Mr. L. F. G. Simmons, of the National Physical Laboratory, to find experimentally the correlation between the turbulent components of velocity
u
0
and
u

y

at two points distant
y
apart in a direction transverse to the stream. The measurements were made at mean speed U = 25 feet per second in a wind tunnel behind a honeycomb with 0·9-inch square mesh. The results are shown in fig. 1 where the ordinates are R

y

= ¯¯
u
o

u
y

/ ¯¯
u
2
and the abscissae are the corresponding values of
y
. It will be seen that the R

y

curve is apparently rounded at the top and that R

y

falls to 0·08 at
y
= 0·38 inches. No measurements were made beyond this point, but extrapolation seems to show that R

y

= 0 when
y
is about 0·5 inches,
i.e
., when
y
is slightly greater than 1/2M. Integrating the curve of fig. 1 the value of
l
2
=
∫
0
0.5"
R

y

= 0·175 inch, so that
l
2
/M = 0·175/0·9 = 0·195.
On magnetic and electrostatic energy
Authors: Guggenheim Edward Armand
Published: December 2006

The present paper is preliminary to another dealing with the thermodynamics of magnetization. The treatment of magnetic energy in most of the standard text-books is unsatisfactory, because the relations deducible directly from Maxwell's equations are inextricably mixed up with the assumption that the ratio of the magnetic induction B to the magnetic field intensity H is a constant. In order to extend the dynamical treatment of magnetic energy to a thermodynamic treatment which takes account of temperature and pressure variations it is essential not to assume that the ratio B/H is a constant. For even supposing that B/H may be assumed constant in the electrodynamic treatment, this merely means that its value is independent of B and H, but it will usually not be independent of temperature and pressure. Suppose, for instance, that for isothermal variation the ratio B/H remains constant, then for adiabatic variations it will usually not remain constant. Similarly if B/H is constant at constant pressure, it will not be constant at constant volume. In order to deduce the accurate thermodynamic relations, it is therefore essential to be clear about the eletrodynamic formulae for magnetic energy for the general case that B is any single valued continuous function of H. Such formulae will be applicable not only to diamagnetic and paramagnetic substances but also to ferromagnetic substances and even permanent magnets provided we exclude hysteresis. The treatment presented here is an elaboration of that of Cohn. Some of the errors made by other authors are discussed in a later section. 2—Notation Our notation agrees, so far as possible, with that of the S. U. N. Committee and with that of Cohn. In particular we leave open the question whether ε
0
and μ
0
are identically equal to unity. The most important symbols used are the following:—
The thermodynamics of magnetization.
Authors: Guggenheim Edward Armand
Published: December 2006

An accurate analysis of the thermodynamics of magnetic systems has to our knowledge never been made. The accounts given in the usual sources of reference are slight. Quite recently Stoner has tried to remedy this deficiency by a paper full of interest, but there are several points in his treatment which seem to us not altogether free from objection. We are therefore attempting in the present paper to give an accurate and fairly comprehensive treatment of the subject, in which the method of approach is somewhat different. This treatment seems to clarify the situation considerably. In particular we give a much more thorough analysis of pressure-volume effects than has previously been attempted. At the end of our paper we consider the relation between some of Stoner's formulae and our own. The thermodynamics of magnetic systems may be regarded as an extension of the electrodynamics of such systems to take account of thermal changes and volume changes of the magnetic matter. The chief difficulty encountered was that of finding a logically consistent treatment of magnetic energy from a purely electrodynamic aspect. In most of the recognized text-books either the treatment is not self-consistent or else it is assumed that the ratio of the magnetic induction to the magnetic field intensity is a constant. In a thermodynamic treatment this assumption may not be made even for diamagnetic and paramagnetic substances, because even supposing it to be valid at constant temperature it will not be valid when the temperature varies. Nor ca it generally be accurate both for variations at constant volume and for variations at constant pressure. It is therefore essential to start with a formula for magnetic energy which is independent of any assumed relation between the magnetic induction and the magnetic field intensity other than that each is a single valued continuous function of the other. This subject has been discussed in another paper where a formula of general validity for magnetic energy was obtained. We shall make this the basis of the present treatment.
The diffusion of gases through metals III-The degassing of nickel and the diffusion of carbon monoxide through nickel.
Authors: Smithells C. J. , Ransley C. E.
Published: December 2006

When a piece of metal prepared by a commercial process is heated for the first time
in vacuo
, a considerable amount of gas is usually evolved. With the more refractory metals like nickel or molybdenum, evacuation for a few minutes at 1000° C is sufficient to remove part only of gas present, and prolonged heating for many hours is necessary before the evolution ceases to be measurable. It may be assumed that some part at least of this gas is derived from the body of the metal and must presumably reach the surface by diffusion. The total gas is extracted much more rapidly if the metal is actually melted, and this method of estimating the gases in steel and other metals has been very generally adopted. The fact that the evolution of gases from metals on heating depends upon a process of diffusion from the interior to the surface of the metal, and subsequent evaporation, has been established for the simple gases. The desorption of nitrogen from molybdenum, and of hydrogen from hydrogen-charged nickel has been shown to follow theoretical equations derived from Fick's diffusion law. In practice, the gases obtained from commercial metals often contain a large proportion of compound gases, particularly the oxides of carbon, but very little information is available on the diffusion of such gases through metals.
The reflexion coefficients of ionospheric regions.
Authors: Appleton Edward Victor , Piddington J. H.
Published: December 2006

In a recent communication to the Society, Watson Watt, Wilkins and Bowen (1937) have described the results of an ionospheric investigation conducted by means of radio wave reflexion which they have interpreted as demonstrating the existence of four or more highly reflecting strata in the lower atmosphere, about 10 km. above ground level. These results and their interpretation are naturally of great interest to those whose field of investigation has been the ionospheric regions at greater heights; for, as the authors of (I) state, their own findings “must modify the detailed discussion of ionospheric soundings effected with sounding waves which have had to traverse these highly reflecting strata”. Moreover, if the high reflexion coefficients estimated for these low-lying strata are correct, even as regards order of magnitude only, it is immediately obvious that our ideas concerning the travel of wireless waves to great distances require radical revision, for, since 1926, it has been customary to regard such communication as generally being effected either by way of Region E in the case of long waves, or by way of Region F in the case of the shorter waves. It can, further, be asserted that current explanations of such phenomena are in such close agreement with the results of what is now known of the structure of the ionosphere at levels of 90 km. and above, that any evidence not in harmony with these accepted relations must be accorded the closest scrutiny. The experimental observations of Colwell and Friend (1936) and of the authors of (I) (1937) concerning the return of radio waves from low levels in the atmosphere are of the greatest scientific importance and, immediately they were announced, investigations were begun here in Cambridge to see if we could confirm them. It was desired especially to ascertain in this connexion how far the existence of such lowlying reflecting strata influenced the interpretation of the vast amount of observational work already carried out in various parts of the world on radio reflexion at higher levels.
The crystal structure of insulin I. The investigation of air-dried insulin crystals.
Authors: Crowfoot Dorothy
Published: December 2006

The crystal structure of insulin is of interest not only in itself but as part of the wider problem of protein structure considered as a whole. The early X-ray work on protein fibres gave strong support to the original chemical theories of the existence of polypeptide chains as the essential backbone of the protein molecule. The comparatively small spacings of 3-4, 4∙5 and 10-11 A which are most prominent on a large section of X-ray photographs of the scleroproteins are easily interpretable in terms of a fundamental chain structure (Astbury and Woods 1933; Astbury and Sisson 1935). It is on the other hand difficult to reconcile a chain structure with certain of the physical properties of the globular proteins, particularly their crystalline form and their behaviour in the ultracentrifuge as approximately spherical masses of molecular weight some multiple of 35,000 (Svedberg 1937
a
). Yet there is much evidence, physical as well as chemical, that the two types of protein structure are closely interrelated. Certain of the natural protein fibres show X-ray reflexions corresponding to very long spacings superimposed on the simple
β
keratin type of fibre pattern. These long spacings—up to 300 A in feather keratin (Astbury and Marwick 1932), tendon and collagen (Wyckolf and Corey 1936)—are more of the order of magnitude of the spacings which define the crystal structure, i. e. intermolecular distances, in crystals of the soluble proteins. And further fibre forms can be obtained from the crystalline proteins, particularly relevant observations being those on edestin and excelsin (Astbury, Dickinson and Bailey 1935). Several attempts have been made on the theoretical side to reconcile these facts, and two views of protein structure in particular have been stated in some detail. Astbury has advocated a variety of straight chain structures for the different fibre proteins which may be coiled into spiral forms or folded in layers in the globular proteins (Astbury and others 1935), as also discussed by Pauling and Mirsky (1936), while D. M. Wrinch (1937
a
) has shown that the occurrence of an internal cyclizing process might lead to the development from polypeptide chains of beautifully symmetrical “cyclol” networks both open and space enclosing. But on the experimental side many more observations are necessary before even these quite different hypotheses can be distinguished, and one possible approach seems to be through a more complete X-ray study of the crystalline globular proteins.
A new basis for cosmology
Authors: Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice
Published: December 2006

The modern study of cosmology is dominated by Hubble’s observations of a shift to the red in the spectra of the spiral nebulae—the farthest parts of the universe—indicating that they are receding from us with velocities proportional to their distances from us. These observations show us, in the first place, that all the matter in a particular part of space has the same velocity (to a certain degree of accuracy) and suggest a model of the universe in which there is a
natural velocity
for the matter at any point, varying continuously from one point to a neighbouring point. Referred to a four-dimensional space-time picture, this natural velocity provides us with a
preferred time-axis
at each point, namely, the time-axis with respect to which the matter in the neighbourhood of the point is at rest. By measuring along this preferred time-axis we get an absolute measure of time, called the
epoch
. Such ideas of a preferred time-axis and absolute time depart very much from the principles of both special and general relativity and lead one to expect that relativity will play only a subsidiary role in the subject of cosmology. This first point of view, which differs markedly from that of the early workers in this field, has been much emphasized recently by Milne.