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What Is Creative? - Part 7

We have already mentioned the discovery of the nucleus of the atom by Ernest Rutherford just before World War I. Rutherford continued his experiments in bombarding substances with alpha rays from radium. When he tried nitrogen, he found that it broke down into hydrogen and oxygen. This, he realized, meant he was actually breaking up the nucleus of the atom. The year of this discovery was 1918—right in the midst of World War I. This was a key discovery which unlocked a chain of subsequent research and discoveries.

Two of Rutherford's co-workers, Mrs. Cockcroft and Wal­  ton, were able to duplicate his results by using artificially acceler­ated ions rather than the natural alpha particles of radium. Next, James Chadwick found that when certain substances were hit by alpha rays, a new kind of particle was emitted—the neutron. Then, Enrico Fermi, working in Rome, found that if the target were surrounded by paraffin, to slow down the neutrons, isotopes could be produced. As a result of Fermi's experiments, other scientists carried out further studies that resulted in the discovery that the uranium nucleus could be split into parts—the first proof of the possibility of uranium fission.

Meanwhile, Fermi had moved to the United States and was working at Columbia University. In his experiments there, he discovered that neutrons are emitted when the uranium nucleus breaks apart. This was another major breakthrough in knowledge. At that stage physicists all over the world knew that a chain reaction could be set up. The only questions from then on were when and under what conditions.

The basic research then went into a relatively fallow stage until the beginning of World War II, when Ernest Lawrence saw the possibility that this chain-reaction effect could be of importance as a military development. Lawrence, while at the University of California, had developed the first practical cyclotron. It was suggested to Lawrence that this chain reaction might be accomplished with uranium-235. Then, in Lawrence's labora­tory, three assistants, Glen Seaburg, Joe Kennedy, and Arthur Wall, found that a new element could be produced by bombard­ing uranium with neutrons. This new element we now call plutonium. And they discovered that plutonium would not only undergo fission like uranium-235, but could also be separated chemically from the U-235 to offer important production and performance advantages. Lawrence then contacted Dr. James B. Conant and Dr. Arthur Holly Compton in Chicago to propose the use of uranium-235 to get the chemical plutonium for making an atomic bomb. Out of this meeting came the real start of the atomic project as a war program.

It is clear from this history that the building up of discoveries, with one leading to another, may go on for years before an ultimate product or final theory can result. And, of course, the atomic bomb was by no means the "ultimate" result of all this research. We are just beginning to realize the commercial, medical, and technological by-products of this early atomic research, and there is no measuring at this time what the ultimate results will be.

In his fascinating book, Machines That Built America, Roger Burlingame traces the effects that one idea had on the industrial course of the United States and the world. The idea itself was for a pneumatic tire patented in 1888 by John Boyd Dunlop, an Irish veterinary.

Related terms include business management and economics and starting a small business.