Word: cavendish
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Lord Rutherford, discoverer of the atom's nucleus, pioneer atom-smasher and fourth Cavendish Professor, died last year...
Free School Lane. The Cavendish Laboratory came to birth in 1870 when the Seventh Duke of Devonshire (whose family name was Cavendish) gave Cambridge $31,500 to start a physics department. First building was a three-story, L-shaped affair which is still standing, though its once-white stone is now black with age. First director was James Clerk Maxwell, a Scotsman who as a schoolboy wore lace frill collars, a tunic and square-toed shoes, was considered peculiar by his mates. They were quite right. When he was hardly past 30, Maxwell invented electro-magnetic waves (e.g., wireless waves...
...vibration. He finally picked Free School Lane, a narrow little street several hundred yards back from King's Parade where stand most of the Cambridge colleges. Free School Lane is still barred to all forms of transportation-except bicycles and shoe leather. In the early clays of Cavendish, equipment was meagre. When the august Royal Society condescended to send up an electro-dynamometer from London, the rejoicing among Cavendish students almost became undignified...
Second director was furry-visaged John William Strutt, Baron Rayleigh, who discovered the "noble" gases (Argon, Helium, etc.) and made the most accurate contemporary determinations of the ohm and the ampere. He got a Nobel Prize 20 years after he retired from the Cavendish directorship. Third director was Sir Joseph John Thomson, who held the post for 35 years, discovered the electron while studying electric discharge in gases. Still alive, a Grand Old Man of 82, Sir Joseph strolls about in a black bowler with a cane clutched behind his back, attends "hall" (dinner) once a week, still putters...
Born in New Zealand, he maintained to the end the earthy gruffness of an outlander. Sir Arthur Eddington says that Rutherford used to "pull my leg" because Sir Arthur was a mere theorist. Enormously respected and revered by the Cavendish workers, Rutherford was rated by them a hard taskmaster. When he went down to London for the Thursday meetings of the Royal Society, the pace of work at Cavendish noticeably slackened...