The Nobel PrizesSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan., 1927), pp. 84-90Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/7803 .

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE BY DR. E. E. SLOSSON

Director of Science Ser^vice, Inc., Washington, D. C.

THE NOBEL PRIZES

NOBEL prizes were presented to five men of science by the King of Sweden on December 10. Germany maintains its leadership in the nnmber of scientific men worthy to receive the prize, as many in physics and chemistry going to that nation this year as have to the United States during the twenty-five vears of their history.

The University of Gottingen claims the distinction of two of the latest prize winners. Professor PRichard Zsigmondy, who has received the 1925 chemistry award, did important work in the de- velopment of the ultramicroseope which he utilized in determining the size of the mninute suspended particles of colloidal gold. The work for which Dr. James Franck, now at the University of Gottingen, and Dr. Gustav Hertz, of the University of Halle, who divided the 1925 physics prize between them, are best knowrn in scientific circles was performed while they were associated at the University of Berlin. This was the first proof of the validity of the quantum theory, which was proposed originally by Max Planck and has caused a revolution in physical science in recent years, by proposing that light and other forms of radiation are not continuous wave motions, as was formerly thought, but consist of separate bundles or "quanta" of energy.

Franck and Hertz presented their now historic paper before the Berlin Phys- ical Society in 1912. They found that if an otherwise evaecuated tube containecd a small amount of the vapor of mereury, and that if two pieces of nmetal or elee-

trodes were sealed within so that the atoms of the vapor could be bombarded by rapidly moving electrons, or particles of electricity, a line corresponding to a certain wave length of light appeared when the glow of the tube was analyzed with the spectroscope. But this only oceurred when a definite voltage was ap- plied, which meant that unless the elec- trons were moving with a certain min- imum speed, the particular waave length of light was not given off from the glow- ing mereury vapor. At the time, Pro- fessor Fritz Haber, greatest of German chemists, is said to have remarked that "this paper will be fundamental in the progress of physics, " a prediction which has been amply fulfilled.

Dr. Theodor Svedberg, recipient of the 1926 chemistry prize, is an outstand- ing figure in the realm of colloid chem- istry. He was recently invited to come to the IUnited States to attend a sym- posium on colloid chemistry at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, and remained long enough to give a course of lectures to students at that institution. He has since returned to the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

Professor Jean Baptiste Perrin, of the Sorbonne, University of Paris, and win- ner of the 1926 physics prize, is well known to scientists for work done on the Brownian movement, the name given to the rapid oscillatory motion of minute particles suspended in liquids. Professor Perrin developed ingenious methods for measuring this movement which showed that the tiny particles behave in the

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 85

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PROFESSOR JEAN BAPTISTE PERRIN UNIvERSITY OF PARIS, WHO HAS RECEIVED A NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS.

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86 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

PROFESSOR JAMES FRANCK UNIVERSITY OF G6TTINGEN, WHO HAS RECEIVED A NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS.

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PROFESSOR GUSTAV HERTZ UNIVERSITY 0F HALLEN WHO HAS RECEIVED A NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS.

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88 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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PROFESSOR RICHARD ZSJGMONDY UNIVERSITY OF GISTTINGEN, WHO HAS RECEIVED A NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY.

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 89

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PROFESSOR THEODOR SVEDBERG UNIVERSITY OP UPPSALA, WHO HAS RECEIVED A NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY.

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90 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

same way scientists have assumed that molecules would act in accordance with the kinetic theory of gases. He has been

more recently concerned in studies to show the effect of light on chemical re- actions.

MAKING AND UNMAKING MATTER

THE greatest scientific achievement of the nineteenth century, in the opinion of those who lived in that century, was the formulation of two fundaluental physical laws of the universe, the conservation of mass and the conservation of energy. According to these matter and energy were immutable in amount and neither could ever be created or destroyed in the minutest measure.

But the twentieth is an unsettling century. Such mental revolutionists as Einstein, Planck and Bohr have opened our eyes and widened our outlook. We can not be so cocksure about many ideas as were the simple-minded scientists of the former century. Some of the gen- eralizations which seemed to them abso- lute and universal principles of nature appear to the more critical eyesight of the present generation to be disguised definitions; similar, as Eddington puts it, to the great law to which there is no exception, that there are three feet in every yard.

For instance, the law of the conserva- tion of energy. We see a lump of burn- ing coal giving off energy at a great rate as radiant heat and light. Where did that energy come from? Where was it when the lump was cold, if no energy can be created in the course of com- bustion? The reply of the nineteenth century chemist was clear and decided. The energy was there all the time in exactly the same amount, although its presence could not be demonstrated be- cause it was in the form of "potential energy." Obviously this was unanswer- able as an argument, although not very enlightening as an explanation. We are

now-a-days disposed to suspect that this "potential energy" was put into the coal by logic rather than by geology, and that if it exists in nature at all it is in the nature of the human mind. The twin laws of conservation of matter and energy are as useful as ever, for they still serve to clarify our conceptions and to guide our experimentation. No ex- periment has ever been able to detect the slightest flaw in them, and it may never be possible to devise tests so deli- cate as to disclose any discrepancy. Yet neither law is now regarded as absolute in itself and it seems that we shall have to substitute a general law which will include the two and allow for the trans- formation of matter into energy and vice versa. Einstein has worked out the formnula for the equivalence of matter and energy, so we can now calculate how much heat will be produced if a certain mass of matter is annihilated. This idea has been welcomed by the astronomers who have long been hard put to it to devise means of keeping up the furnace fires of the sun as long as mankind would like to live. They have now figured out by Einstein's formula that the sun is losing weight through the destruction of its material and the emission of immate- rial energy at the rate of four million tons a second. But even though wasting away at this appalling rate the sun can hold out for ten million million years. This gives a welcolme extension of time for the life of our world and permits us to hope that we may get our social sys- tem perfected before we all become Eskimos.

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