Speaker: Roger H. Stuewer, University of Minnesota

Title: Nuclear Disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy

Abstract: I will trace the origin, development, and surprising resolution of a controversy during 1922-1928 between Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and Hans Pettersson and Gerhard Kirsch at the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna, a controversy that centered on the questions of which nuclei can be disintegrated by alpha particles with the emission of protons, whether these protons can be observed under particular experimental conditions, and how this disintegration process should be interpreted theoretically. We will see that these scientific issues became entangled in a web of personal and institutional rivalries that greatly raised the stakes in the outcome of the controversy, and that illustrate how physics functions in an intensely competitive atmosphere.

Curriculum Vitae :

Personal

Birthdate: September 12, 1934
Married, 2 Children
Address: Program in History of Science and Technology, Tate Laboratory of Physics, University of Minnesota, 116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. Telephone: 612-624-8073; Fax: 612-624-4578; E-mail: rstuewer@physics.umn.edu.

Education

Ph.D., History of Science and Physics, University of Wisconsin, 1968
M.S., Physics, University of Wisconsin, 1964
B.S., Physics Education, University of Wisconsin, 1958

Positions Held

• Professor of History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, 1974-2000, Emeritus 2000-present; faculty appointments in School of Physics and Astronomy, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, American Studies Program, Classical Civilization Program
• Director, Program in History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, 1972-89
• Pieter Zeeman Visiting Professor of the History of Modern Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1998
• Visiting Professor of the History of Physics, Universities of Vienna and Graz, 1989
• Volkswagen Foundation Visiting Professor of the History of Science, Deutsches Museum, Munich, 1981-82
• Member, Board of Directors, Bakken Library and Museum, Minneapolis, 1980-present
• Acting Director, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, 1980-81
• Director of Graduate Studies, American Studies Program, University of Minnesota, 1977-78
• Honorary Research Associate, Harvard University, 1974-75
• Associate Professor of History of Science, Boston University, 1971-72
• Associate and Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Minnesota, 1967-71, 1972-74
• Instructor in Physics, Heidelberg College, 1960-62
• Physics and Mathematics Teacher, Germantown (Wisconsin) High School, 1958-59

Research Interests

History of modern physics, especially the history of quantum and nuclear physics prior to the second world war within their institutional, political, and social contexts.

Honors and Awards

Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies, 1983, 1974
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1983
George Taylor Distinguished Service Award, University of Minnesota, 1990
Distinguished Service Citation, American Association of Physics Teachers, 1990
Fellow, American Physical Society, 1991
Distinguished Lecturer, Sigma Xi, 1997-1999
Centennial Speaker, American Physical Society, 1998-1999
Alfred Romer Lecturer, St. Lawrence University, 1999

Societies

• American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section L Nominating Committee, 1980-83; Council Member-at-Large, 1984-88; Chair, 1993-94
• American Association of Physics Teachers, Publications Committee, 1978-present; Committee on History and Philosophy of Physics, 1985-91, 1998-01; Committee on the Interests of Senior Physicists, 2000-present
• American Institute of Physics, Advisory Committee on History of Physics, Member and Chair, 1978-93; Physics Programs Policy Committee, 1988-93
• American Physical Society, Division of the History of Physics, Executive Committee, 1982-85; Chair, 1986-88; Forum on the History of Physics, Chair, 1998-99; Abraham Pais Prize for the History of Physics Committee, 2001-06; Abraham Pais Prize Selection Committee, Chair, 2004-05; Member 2005-07; Forum Councillor, 2006-2009.
• British Society for the History of Science
• Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
• History of Science Society, Secretary, 1972-78; Council, 1978-81; Pfizer Award Committee, 1982-84; Honors and Awards Committee, 1995-97; Watson-Davis Award Committee, 1997-2000
• International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of History of Science, Commission on History of Modern Physics, Co-Chair, 1993-present
• Sigma Pi Sigma, Affiliate Representative to AAAS, Section L, 1991-2000
• Sigma Xi, University of Minnesota Chapter, President, 1994-95; North Central Regional Nominating Committee, 1995-96

Editorships and Editorial Boards

• Physics in Perspective, Co-editor-in-Chief, 1997-present
• NTM: Internationale Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Ethik der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, Editorial Board, 1992-present
• Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Editorial Board, 1989-present
• Birkhäuser Verlag, Science Networks International Book Series on History of Exact Sciences, Editorial Board, 1988-present
• American Journal of Physics Resource Letters, Editor, 1978-present
• Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics, Editorial Board, 1992-96; Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, Associate Editor, 2000-02
• Institute of Physics (London), Twentieth Century Physics, Editorial Board, 1991-95
• American Institute of Physics, History of Modern Physics Book Series, Editorial Board, 1979-96
• Isis, Editorial Board, 1982-88
• Science, Technology, and Human Values, Editorial Board, 1977-87

Invited Lectures

Over 100 invited lectures at universities and conferences in the United States, Canada, England, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia, Israel, and Japan.

Publications (Selected)

“A Critical Analysis of Newton’s Work on Diffraction, Isis, 61 (1970), 188-205.

Historical and Philosophical Perspectives of Science, ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970); reprinted Roger Hahn, ed., Classics in the History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. I (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1989).

The Compton Effect: Turning Point in Physics (New York: Science History Publications, 1975).

Nuclear Physics in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium on the 1930s, ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979).

Springs of Scientific Creativity, ed. with R. Aris and H.T. Davis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

"The Nuclear Electron Hypothesis," in William R. Shea, ed., Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), 19-67.

"Nuclear Physicists in a New World: The Émigrés of the 1930s in America," Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 7 (1984), 23-40.

"Artificial Disintegration and the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy," in Peter Achinstein and Owen Hannaway, ed., Observation, Experiment, and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 239-307.

"Niels Bohr and Nuclear Physics," in A.P. French and P. Kennedy, ed., Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 197-220, 362-363.

"Bringing the News of Fission to America," Physics Today, 38 (October 1985), 48-56.

"Gamow's Theory of Alpha Decay," in Edna Ullman-Margalit, ed., The Kaleidoscope of Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1986), 147-186.

"The Naming of the Deuteron," American Journal of Physics, 54 (1986), 206-218.

"Rutherford's Satellite Model of the Nucleus," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 16 (1986), 321-352.

The Michelson Era in American Science 1870-1930, ed. with Stanley Goldberg (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1988).

The Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy since the Seventeenth Century, ed. with Mary Jo Nye and Joan L. Richards (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).

"Mass-Energy and the Neutron in the Early Thirties," Science in Context, 6 (1993), 89-133.

"The Origin of the Liquid-Drop Model and the Interpretation of Nuclear Fission," Perspectives on Science, 2 (1994), 39-92.

"The Seventh Solvay Conference: Nuclear Physics at the Crossroads," in A.J. Kox and Daniel M. Siegel, ed., No Truth Except in the Details: Essays in Honor of Martin J. Klein (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 333-362.

The Emergence of Modern Physics: Proceedings of a Conference Commemorating a Century of Physics, Berlin 22-24 March 1995, ed. with Dieter Hoffmann and Fabio Bevilacqua (Pavia: Università degli Studi di Pavia, 1996).

"Gamow, Alpha Decay, and the Liquid-Drop Model of the Nucleus," in E. Harper, W.C. Parke, and G.D. Anderson, ed., The George Gamow Symposium (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1997), 30-43.

“History and Physics,” Science and Education, 7 (1998), 13-30.

“History as Myth and Muse,” Inaugural Lecture, Pieter Zeeman Visiting Professor of the History of Modern Physics (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 1999), 24 pp.

“Theoretical Physicists and Their Institutes,” University of Amsterdam, Institute of Theoretical Physics, <http://www.science.uva.nl/research/itf/stuewer.html>, 31 pp.

Controversy and Consensus: Nuclear Beta Decay 1911-1934, by Carsten Jensen (deceased), ed. with Finn Aaserud, Helge Kragh, and Erik Rüdinger (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2000).

“The Compton Effect: Transition to Quantum Mechanics,” Annalen der Physik, 11-12 (2000), 990-1004.

“The Discovery of Artificial Radioactivity,” in Monique Bordry and Pierre Radvanyi, ed., Œuvre et Engagement de Frédéric Joliot-Curie (Les Ulis: EDP Sciences, 2001), pp. 11-20.

"The Experimental Challenge of Light Quanta," in Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehrner, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Einstein (forthcoming).

"Historical Surprises," Science and Education (forthcoming).

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