image: Cover of "The Planetary Atom" view more
Credit: World Scientific
This is the story of a scientist who, for reasons connected with family upbringing, felt like an outsider in Victorian England. He was less concerned with recognition than with his quest for truth and missed many opportunities. Luckily, he encountered Ernest Rutherford and became deeply involved with a pressing scientific problem of the day involving famous physicists such as Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Louis de Broglie. Despite this, his researches always led in an unfashionable direction. Although his ideas were innovative and correct, they focussed on aspects his contemporaries preferred to sweep under the carpet. Nonetheless, he was right to question the perceived wisdom and did so with a deep understanding. In many ways, he strove ahead of others in criticising the Planetary Atom advocated by Rutherford and Bohr. He understood why it could not be reconciled with the principles of Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, of which he was one of the principal exponents.
Had his role been merely to oppose, Schott might merit mention in a specialised history of fundamental science, but not much more. However, the part he played proved very significant. He discovered a new kind of radiation which, by rights, should bear his name.
It is at this point that George Schott becomes something of a tragic hero of science—almost a romantic figure. Somehow, he contrived to make his great discovery at a time when nobody wanted to hear about it, least of all Ernest Rutherford himself. Schott had uncovered something which might have held up the development of the new Quantum Mechanics. Even after this hurdle had been overcome, his effect, which goes by the name of “synchrotron radiation” for physicists and astronomers, came just at the wrong moment, before synchrotrons had even been invented, and the credit went to others.
Today, synchrotron radiation, alongside laser light, is one of the most useful tools in laboratory research, with applications in many fields, including medicine and engineering. Nevertheless, Schott remains a largely unrecognised scientific genius. This imaginary biography seeks to correct such a glaring omission and restore his true role by filling in, as only novels can do, many gaps in a life we know little about.
The Planetary Atom also champions another way of thinking about science—not as a dry collection of facts, but as a human activity full of psychological complexities worthy of the realm of literature.
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The book retails for US$58 / £50 (hardcover), US$28 / £25 (paperback) and is also available in electronic formats. To order or know more about the book, visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/Q0294.
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