50 years ago

Graduate Employment: A Sample Survey — The desirability of information of this kind has been recognized ever since 1946, when the Barlow Committee's Report on Scientific Man-power sowed the seeds for what has become a widespread concern about Britain's chronic shortage of scientists and engineers; about the deleterious effect of the shortage on our national position; about the scarcity of teachers of science and mathematics; and about the failure of our educational system to weave into the pattern of general culture an appreciation of scientific matters and more important, an awareness of the incredible speed with which their influence over human affairs is growing.

From Nature 27 October 1956.

100 years ago

“The recent radium controversy” — I was absent from Montreal during the time of the interesting discussion which appeared in the Times... In the course of this discussion some weight has been attached to a remark in the second edition of my book “Radio-activity” viz. that radium is a compound of helium and lead... Lord Kelvin quite correctly quotes my words, but I feel that the statement is liable to leave an erroneous impression of my views on the question... At the risk of being somewhat lengthy, I should like to quote fully some statements made in my book... “If the α particle is a helium atom, at least three α particles must be expelled from uranium (238.5) to reduce its atomic weight to that of radium (225). It is known that five α particles are expelled from radium during its successive transformations. This would make the atomic weight of the final residue 225 − 20 = 205. This is very nearly the atomic weight of lead, 206.5. I have for some time considered it probable that lead is the end or final product of radium.” ... I think that the above quotation makes my position clear on this subject.

E. Rutherford

From Nature 25 October 1906.