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The making of a British theoretical physicist – E. C. Stoner's early career

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Geoffrey Cantor
Geoffrey Cantor
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Division of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT.
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Extract

In 1924 Edmund Clifton Stoner (1899–1966), a 24-year-old research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, sought a university post in physics. Having previously studied at Cambridge as an undergraduate, Stoner was nearing the end of three years' postgraduate research under Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford's supervision. 1924 was not, however, an auspicious time to seek employment since vacancies in university physics departments were scarce. Rutherford showed a kindly interest in Stoner's career and summoned him to his residence – Newnham Cottage – one Friday afternoon in March. Acknowledging Stoner's diabetes as a major concern, he ‘pointed out that I [Stoner] really wanted a job where I could take things fairly easily… He, of course, is prepared to “back me up” & was really very charming, though not very useful in any definite way.’ Subsequent visits to the Appointments Board proved ‘quite fruitless’. Stoner declined to apply for a post at Armstrong College, Newcastle, and only in mid-July did he hear of two more attractive positions. The first, at Durham University, was advertised in the press. Rutherford, who was ‘Affable – pleased with my work(!)’, advised him to apply. Interviewed together with several other candidates, Stoner was unsuccessful but not greatly disappointed. The other post, at the University of Leeds, was brought to his attention by Rutherford.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 277 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1994

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References

I am most grateful to Mrs J. H. Stoner for permitting me to read and quote from her husband's papers. E. C. Stoner's papers are deposited in Special Collections, Brotherton Library, Leeds University and have been catalogued by the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre (CSAC 6/73). Material from this collection is referred to below as MS333, followed by the item number. For their generous assistance I am pleased to thank the staff at the Royal Society Library, London, the Leeds University Archives, Leeds University Central Filing Office and,particularly, Mr P. M. Morrish of Special Collections.

1 ECS to parents, 16 03 1924Google Scholar: MS333/103.

2 Diary, 13 06 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

3 ‘Physics Lectureship Committee, 4 07 1924’Google Scholar; University of Leeds Archives, Minute Book 15.70.

4 Martin, L. to ECS, 5 11 1924: MS333/121.Google Scholar

5 ECS to parents, 23 11 1924Google Scholar: MS333/117. See also Diary, 22 11 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

6 Rutherford, E., ‘Report on the work of Mr E. C. Stoner …’, 23 03 1927Google Scholar: University of Leeds, Central Filing Office.

7 His certificate, first submitted in 1935, was also signed by Whiddington, Kapitza, Chadwick, Dirac, Fowler, Ellis, Eddington, Milne, Sidgwick and Hartree: Certificate of Candidature, Royal Society Library. This list includes most British theoretical physicists of the period.

8 Manchester University established a Chair in Theoretical Physics two years earlier, occupied by Douglas Hartree.

9 The standard account is given in Eve, A. S., Rutherford, Cambridge, 1939Google Scholar; Feather, N., Lord Rutherford, London and Glasgow, 1940Google Scholar; Oliphant, M., Rutherford Recollections of the Cambridge Days, Amsterdam, 1972Google Scholar; Crowther, J. G., The Cavendish Laboratory, 1874–1974, London and Basingstoke, 1974CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, D., Rutherford. Simple Genius, London, 1983Google Scholar; and by several of the contributors to Cambridge Physics of the Thirties (ed. Hendry, J.), Bristol, 1984.Google Scholar See also Heilbron, J. L., H. G. J. Moseley. The Life and Letters of an English Physicist, 1887–1915, Berkeley, 1974, 57.Google Scholar

10 Heilbron, J. L., ‘The origins of the exclusion principle’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (1983), 13, 261–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 This is not, of course, to imply that Rutherford was opposed to theorizing in physics.

12 Diary, late December 1921: MS333/30.

13 ‘Autobiographical sketch’ deposited in the Library of the Royal Society. Extensive selections from this document are quoted in Bates, L. F., ‘Edmund Clifton Stoner 1899–1968’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (1969), 15, 201–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Howarth, T. E. B., Cambridge between Two Wars, London, 1978.Google Scholar

15 Diary, 2 02 1921Google Scholar: MS333/30.

16 ECS, ‘Comments on notebooks, lectures and classes of the Cambridge period, 1919–1924’: MS333/2.

17 Diary, 9 03 1921Google Scholar: MS333/30.

18 Diary, 1 04 1921Google Scholar: MS333/30.

19 Diary, 23 04 1921Google Scholar: MS333/30.

20 Diary, late December 1921: MS333/30.

21 Diary, 20 03 1922: MS333/32.Google Scholar

22 Diary, 7 06 1922: MS333/32.Google Scholar

23 ECS to parents, 26 02 1922Google Scholar: MS333/101.

24 Stead, G. and Stoner, E. C., ‘Low voltage glows in mercury vapour’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1922–1923), 21, 66–74.Google Scholar

25 ECS to his parents, 12 03 1922Google Scholar: MS333/101; ECS's notes on Bohr's lectures: MS333/27.

26 ECS's notes on Bohr's ‘The Quantum Theory and Atomic Structure’: MS333/27.

27 ‘Autobiographical sketch’, op. cit. (13), 33.Google Scholar

28 ECS to his parents, 23 07 1922Google Scholar: MS333/101.

29 Diary, 10 10 1922Google Scholar: MS333/32.

30 Diary, 22 09 1922Google Scholar: MS333/32.

31 Diary, 17 02 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

32 ECS to his parents, 26 11 1922Google Scholar: MS333/101; Diary, 21 11 1922Google Scholar: MS333/32.

33 ECS to his parents, 15 02 1922Google Scholar: MS333/102; Diary, 15 02 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

34 ECS to his parents, 18 02 1923Google Scholar: MS333/102.

35 Diary, 21 02 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

36 Diary, 5 03 1923: MS333/32.Google Scholar

37 ‘Autobiographical sketch’, op. cit. (13), 19.Google Scholar

38 ECS to his parents, 22 05 1923Google Scholar: MS333/102.

39 Rutherford, E. to ECS, 2 10 1923Google Scholar: MS333/106; Diary, 3 October 1923: MS333/32.

40 Diary, 15 03 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

41 Diary, 13 07 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32. See also entry for 29 September 1923.

42 Diary, 31 10 1923Google Scholar; 13 November 1923; 17 November 1923; 3 December 1923: MS333/32.

43 Diary, 17 11 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

44 ECS to his parents, 28 10 1923Google Scholar: MS333/102; Diary, 9 and 22 11 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

45 ECS to his parents, 25 11 1923Google Scholar: MS333/102.

46 Diary, 20 06 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

47 Diary, 3 and 4 03 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33; ECS to his parents, 4 05 1924: MS333/103.Google Scholar

48 Diary, 1 05 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

49 Diary, 7 05 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33. The paper referred to was probably Bohr, N., Kramers, H. A. and Slater, J. C., ‘The quantum theory of radiation’, Philosophical Magazine (1924), 47, 785–802.Google Scholar

50 Diary, 11 and 12 05 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

51 Diary, 17 05 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

52 ECS to his parents, 11 and 14 05 1924Google Scholar: MS333/103.

53 ECS to his parents, 25 07 1924Google Scholar: MS333/103.

54 For Bohr's theory of the early 1920s see the documents included in Niels Bohr Collected Works: Volume 4, The Periodic System (1920–1923) (ed. Nielsen, J. Rud), Amsterdam, 1977Google Scholar, especially Bohr, N., ‘The theory of spectra and atomic constitution’Google Scholar, ibid., 257–328, which is fairly close to the lectures Bohr delivered in Cambridge in March 1922 (MS333/27).

55 Stoner, E. C., ‘The distribution of electrons among atomic levels’, Philosophical Magazine (1924), 48, 719–36.Google Scholar See also Heilbron, , op. cit. (10).Google Scholar

56 de Broglie, L. and Dauvillier, A., ‘Le système spectral des rayons Röntgen et structure de l'atome’, Journale de Physique (1924), 5, 1–19.Google Scholar

57 ECS to his parents, 19 10 1924Google Scholar: MS333/117; ECS to Lande, A., 24 10 1924Google Scholar: Archive for History of Quantum Physics; Sommerfeld, A., 24 02 1925Google Scholar: MS333/126; de Broglie, L. to ECS, 1 05 1925Google Scholar: MS333/126. See also Coster, D. to Bohr, N., 7 12 1924Google Scholar; Bohr, N. to Coster, D., 10 12 1924Google Scholar: Niels Bohr Collected Works, op. cit. (54), 679–81.Google Scholar

58 Heilbron, , op. cit. (10).Google Scholar

59 Diary, late December 1924: MS333/33.

60 Söderqvist, T., ‘Should scientific biography be an edifying genre? Towards an existential approach to science biography’, in Telling Scientific Lives. Studies of Scientific Biography (ed. Shortland, M. and Yeo, R.), Cambridge, forthcoming.Google Scholar A version of this paper was delivered at the Anglo-American Joint Meeting held in Toronto, July 1992.

61 Diary, 10 01 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

62 Barbellion, W. N. P. [Cummings, B. F.], The Journal of a Disappointed Man, London, 1919.Google Scholar H. G. Wells wrote the Introduction. See also Hellyar, R. H., W. N. P. Barbellion, London, 1926.Google Scholar

63 Diary, 10 01 1924Google Scholar: MS333/33.

64 Diary, 4 11 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.

65 Diary, 5 12 1923Google Scholar; end December 1922: MS333/32.

66 Barbellion, , op. cit. (62), 73Google Scholar. Copied on a loose sheet of paper: MS333/32.

67 Diary, entry facing 13 April 1921: MS333/30. Two other entries for 1921 are also relevant: one is an attack on single-sex schools (like Bolton Grammar School) which prevent young men and women forming friendships; the other deals with the fulfilment of the individual through marriage. In 1951 Stoner married Heather Crawford, secretary in the Department of Physics at Leeds University.

68 Diary, 29 09 1923Google Scholar: MS333/32.