100 YEARS AGO

The scientific lessons of the war are crowding upon us. We have already referred to the blunder made by our military authorities in not sending Marconi apparatus to South Africa amongst the first equipments. We now learn indeed, after the investment of Ladysmith is drawing to a close, that Marconi apparatus is being sent out. The silence of Ladysmith during the last eventful weeks will point the moral, which is not likely to be forgotten in the future … Some time ago the importance of a locomotive search-light in operations of war was strongly represented to the military authorities; but they would have none of it. Fortunately, however, the naval force in Natal has now provided the army with one.

As a proof of his cordial sympathy with the cause of bird protection, the Poet Laureate, Mr Alfred Austin, has written a special poem for the Christmas card which the Society for the Protection of Birds is issuing this year. It is entitled “Peace and Goodwill to the Birds,” and is illustrated by a coloured picture of that much persecuted bird the tern, designed for the purpose by Mr. A. Thorburn.

From Nature 23 November 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

Prof. H. Yukawa, who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1949, is best known for his theory of nuclear forces which, in 1935, first postulated the existence of a particle a few hundred times heavier than the electron. The nuclear forces would then bear the same relation to the possible emission and absorption of such a particle as the electromagnetic forces in an atom bear to the emission and absorption of light. The discovery of the meson in cosmic rays appeared to be a confirmation of Yukawa's prediction, but the study of its properties gradually led to the conviction that it could not be identical with the particle required for Yukawa's theory. It was not until 1947 that Powell and his collaborators demonstrated the existence of a second short-lived particle, the π-meson, which is known to be the parent of the cosmic-ray meson, and which is strongly linked to protons and neutrons. This provided a brilliant vindication of Yukawa's idea. The detailed theory of the relation between this particle and the nuclear forces is still in its infancy; but, whatever the outcome, all thought about nuclear forces … is entirely dominated by the ideas of Yukawa.

From Nature 26 November 1949.