50 Years ago

The Neutrino. By Prof. James S. Allen — This small book gives an excellent description of experimental work on the neutrino, which only in the past few years has been shown to have any direct physical property apart from balancing energy, momentum and spin in β-decays. It is a tribute to modern methods of experiment that neutrino-capture in hydrogen has been demonstrated by Reines and Cowan in spite of the fact that a neutrino beam could traverse a thickness of solid material measured in light years without appreciable loss ... It has not happened often that so tricky a field of physics has been cleared up so quickly, as a result of brilliant theoretical work, which suggested many key experiments.

From Nature 23 May 1959.

100 Years ago

The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death: a Study of Cytomorphosis. By Prof. Charles S. Minot — From the time of Cicero, perhaps before, the problems of longevity and of the cause of old age have again and again been subjects of speculation. Not long ago, Metchnikoff, in his optimistic work, “The Nature of Man,” ascribed old age to poisoning by bacterial poisons developed as a result of fermentations occurring in the large intestine ... Prof. Minot develops another conception of the nature of “growing old.” Although in old age a condition of atrophy is frequent, and various degenerations of cells and tissue are usually present, in particular of the arterial system, so that it has been said “a man is only as old as his arteries,” Prof. Minot combats the view that old age is a kind of disease, and regards it as a necessary consequence of the changes in the cells of the body, which are inevitably progressive from birth to death; this succession of cellular changes is termed “cytomorphosis.”

From Nature 20 May 1909