The Backstory to the University of Manchester’s “Transmutation” Meeting

July 7, 2019 — By Steven B. Krivit —

Seventh in a Series on the Rutherford Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Transmutation Myth

On June 8, the University of Manchester held a one-day meeting titled “Centenary of Transmutation.” The meeting was to “celebrate the centenary of the first experiments to successfully transmute one element into another,” allegedly performed by Ernest Rutherford, at Manchester, and published 100 years ago in June 1919. In fact, there had been no such discovery. Instead, the historic discovery was made by Patrick Blackett; it took place at the University of Cambridge, and he published his results 94 years ago, in February 1925.

The key expert that spoke at the meeting was John Alexander Campbell, a well-known Rutherford expert. I had exchanged many e-mails with Campbell in 2014 when I was writing my book Lost History. Despite Campbell’s widespread claims that Rutherford had transmuted nitrogen to oxygen, Campbell did not know of any scientific paper in which Rutherford had published such findings. As I quickly learned, Rutherford never published such results.

In 2017, three years after my conversation with Campbell, I had successfully argued with the historian for the Nobel Foundation that their credit to Rutherford of the nitrogen-to-oxygen transmutation discovery was misplaced. By that time, several other prestigious organizations that I had contacted had also corrected their mistaken versions of this history. These included the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Institute of Physics, the Imperial College London, and Cambridge University.

Eventually, on June 25, 2018, I contacted Matthew Chalmers, the editor of the CERN Courier about an article Campbell had written in 2009, in which he claimed that the nitrogen-to-oxygen transmutation discovery belonged to Rutherford. I provided the relevant details to Chalmers and told him about the other organizations that had completed their own independent analyses.

Months went by. Eventually, Chalmers decided not to append an editorial correction to Campbell’s 2009 article. He also decided not to publish a new article to explain the correct history. Instead, Chalmers asked Campbell to write another article which Chalmers published in May 2019. Again, Campbell, with the help of Chalmers, incorrectly credited Rutherford with the nitrogen-to-oxygen transmutation discovery. Although I exchanged many e-mails with Chalmers, I have no explanation for his actions.

There’s another twist. Rutherford had, in 1919, described his experiment as one based on a disintegration process. This was consistent with Rutherford’s intention to “split the atom” and Rutherford’s initial interpretation that the impinging alpha particle had remained intact after it hit the nitrogen nucleus. This idea of splitting the atom has been the backbone of Campbell’s campaign that Rutherford was the first person to “split the atom.” Campbell and, in fact, the University of Manchester promote the idea that Rutherford “split the atom,” despite the fact that such terminology is associated by everyone else with the process of nuclear fission.

In my communications with Chalmers in the fall of 2018, I explained to him that Patrick Blackett, a research fellow working under Rutherford, in 1925, proved Rutherford wrong and showed that the underlying nuclear process was one of integration, not disintegration.

To my surprise, when I read Campbell’s May 2019 article in the CERN Courier, I saw that Campbell was now claiming that Rutherford had deduced that the underlying process was one of integration. But I had not contacted Campbell since 2015; nor had I published my first article in this series yet. Without speaking with me, somehow Campbell had learned that the alpha particle had entered the nitrogen nucleus — an integration process.

“[Rutherford] deduced that the alpha particle had entered the nucleus of the nitrogen atom and a hydrogen nucleus was emitted,” Campbell wrote. “This marked the discovery that the hydrogen nucleus or the proton, to give it the name coined by Rutherford in 1920, is a constituent of larger atomic nuclei.”

But Campbell botched it. Although the alpha particle had entered the nitrogen atom, constituting an integration process, Campbell had given the credit to Rutherford. That deduction belonged to Blackett, as he wrote in his February 1925 paper:

Of the nature of the integrated nucleus, little can be said without further data. It must however, have a mass 17, and provided no other nuclear electrons are gained or lost in the process, an atomic number 8. It ought therefore to be an isotope of oxygen.

A month later, in March 1925, Rutherford reiterated Blackett’s deduction:

He concluded that the alpha particle was captured in a collision which led to the ejection of a proton. … It thus appears that the nucleus may increase rather than diminish in mass as the result of collisions in which the proton is expelled. (Rutherford, Ernest (1925) “Studies of Atomic Nuclei,” in Proceedings of the Royal Institution Library of Science, 9, 75)

On May 15, 2019, two weeks after I saw what Campbell had done in the CERN Courier, I began my second round of correspondence with him and informed him of his errors. Campbell replied a week later.

“In the future, I will be more careful and not summarize it as that he turned nitrogen into oxygen but use what was known in 1919, that he turned nitrogen into hydrogen,” Campbell wrote.

Campbell had effectively retracted his claim that Rutherford had transmuted nitrogen to oxygen. However, he had come up with a new approach to maintain his wishful thinking that Rutherford was the world’s first successful alchemist. He was now trying to say that the first artificial transmutation, which by definition is the change of one element to another, still belonged to Rutherford because Rutherford “turned nitrogen into hydrogen.”

But Rutherford never made such a weak claim; he knew the difference between a hydrogen atom and an energetic proton, and he certainly knew that the nitrogen atom had turned into something else. But in 1919 he had no information about the residual nucleus. By 1920, in his Bakerian lecture, Rutherford speculated, incorrectly as Patrick Blackett later showed, that the nitrogen changed into boron or carbon.

When I saw how Campbell was attempting to twist history in his 2019 CERN Courier article, I began an Internet search to see what else Campbell was saying. That’s when I found out about the forthcoming “Centenary of Transmutation” meeting and saw Campbell’s name listed as a featured speaker. Based on the meeting announcements, it was clear to me that the organizers were going to, certainly unknowingly, perpetuate the incorrect version of this history, with Campbell’s help.

On May 19, 2019, I wrote to the two organizers, Neil Todd and Peter Rowlands. There was no easy way for me to say it, but, as gently as I could, I advised them that their plans for the meeting were for the wrong discovery, the wrong discoverer, the wrong university and the wrong year. I told them that the 1919 Rutherford papers marked his discovery of the proton, not transmutation. I told them that the discovery of the first artificial transmutation was performed by Patrick Blackett, at Cambridge University, who published his findings in 1925. At the end of my e-mail, I wrote, “I propose that you use the opportunity of your colloquium to inform the scientific community about the correction to this history.”

I also sent that e-mail to James Hopkins, the historian and heritage manager at the University of Manchester, and to Martin Schröder, the vice-president and dean at Manchester. I had already been in contact with Schröder. A year earlier, I had shown him the nitrogen-to-oxygen error on the Manchester Web site. At the time, I also informed Sean Freeman, the head of the School of Physics and Astronomy. In response, they made two significant corrections for which Schröder thanked me, although the Manchester Web site still conflates the discoveries of Rutherford and Blackett.

Two days passed, and neither of the organizers responded to me. I was concerned that they were intending to ignore the matter and were on course to inadvertently misinform students and the scientific community. The meeting was fast approaching, so I escalated the matter. On May 21, at about 7 p.m., I wrote again to the organizers and this time copied the top three officials of the University: Lemn Sissay (Chancellor), Edward M Astle (Chair of the Board of Governors), and Gillian Easson (Pro-Chancellor):

Drs. Todd and Rowlands, in 18 days, you are scheduled to host a one-day meeting at the University of Manchester “to celebrate the centenary of Rutherford’s discovery of artificial transmutation by collision of alpha-particles with nitrogen.” Three days ago, I informed you that the discovery credit does not belong to Rutherford but to Blackett. I realize that your first impulse must be to assume that I am some sort of a madman or crackpot. Perhaps that explains why I have not had the courtesy of a response from you. I do hope you are performing your own due diligence, cross-checking my facts with credible sources, and considering how to adjust your forthcoming meeting.

A few minutes later, shortly before 3 a.m. London time, Todd wrote back to me, cc’ing the university officials:

Thank you for your communications which have been noted. We will respond to you in due course with a considered view when the IoP History of Physics of Group has had a chance to review your various claims.

I wrote back to Todd immediately and told him the bad news: the IoP History of Physics of Group not only had reviewed my information eight months earlier but had also concurred. I sent a copy of the final communications I had had with the IoP head of education and the IOP History of Physics Group chairman to Todd, Rowlands, and the officials.

I never heard back from any of them. I was certain that something significant was going to happen at the meeting. The attendees were either going to continue to learn the incorrect history, or they were going to learn that the very premise of the meeting — to celebrate Rutherford’s transmutation of one element to another, performed in 1917 through 1919, at the University of Manchester — was wrong.