The Spectra of Neon, Hydrogen, and Helium

Abstract

IN a letter published in NATURE of March 6, Prof. Fowler pointed out that a series of “parallelisms” that we gave of lines in the spectra of neon and hydrogen were probably coincidences, and could not be taken as evidence of identity. We are sorry that we did not make our meaning plainer, in our letter in NATURE for February 27, for we did not mean that the lines we compared in the two spectra were identical. The numbers we used were by Watson, and both spectra were measured from plates produced by the same instrument, and, of course, measured by the same person; thus experimental error was eliminated so far as possible. We were, however, in hope that possibly some similarity in atomic complexity might be argued from this “parallelism.” But on talking the matter over with Prof. Fowler, whose knowledge of the subject is far greater than ours, we see that the evidence is not sufficient to justify any such assumption of similarity in the atomic complexity of these two elements, and we must therefore with regret abandon the idea.