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Thysics in Canada
The Bulletin of the Canadian Association of Physicists
Volume 21, No. i
Spring 196Ç Printemps
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Physics in Canada
The Bulletin oj the Canadian Association oj Physicists
Bulletin de l'Association Canadienne des Physiciens
La Physique au Canada
Vol. 21, N o . i, Spring 1965
CORPORATE M E M B E R S H I P
4
A B O U T T H E ASSOCIATION
5
T H E ORIGIN O F T H E SOLAR S Y S T E M
by G. M. Griffiths
T H E BIOLOGY O F I N D U S T R I A L R E S E A R C H I,
by R. W. Jackson
6
17
C.A.P. AFFAIRS
30
NEWS
32
CANADIAN PHYSICISTS
37
J O H N STUART FOSTER
40
BOOKS
44
A. Vallance Jones, EDITORIAL BOARD: D. V. Cormack, A. Kavadas,
H. N. Rundle, T. P. Pepper, G. G. Shepherd.
EDITORIAL ADDRESS: Dept. of Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Sask.
EDITOR:
ADVERTISING AND SUBSCRIPTIONS:
University of Toronto Press, Front Campus, Toronto.
PUBLISHED FOR THE ASSOCIATION BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
AUTHORIZED AS SECOND CLASS MAIL BY THE POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT, OTTAWA,
AND FOR PAYMENT OF POSTAGE IN CASH
CORPORATE MEMBERSHIP
The constitution of the Association provides for the enrollment of
Corporate Members. Corporate Membership is open to all corporations,
firms, institutions or individuals who wish to contribute to the Educational Trust Fund of the Association. This fund is being put to good
use in furthering the educational activities of the Association—in
particular the C.A.P. Secondary School Prize examination which has
been operating with such success. Arrangements for corporate membership should be made by contacting Dr. R. H. Hay, Aluminum Company
of Canada, Kingston, Ontario
The following is a list of our corporate members at the time of going
to press:
D. VAN NOSTRAND CO.;
POLYMER CORP. LTD., SARNIA;
THE STEEL COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD., HAMILTON;
DOMINION FOUNDRY AND STEEL;
DEHAVILLAND AIRCRAFT;
DOMINION ELECTROHOME;
CANADIAN WESTINGHOUSE;
R.C.A. VICTOR CO. LTD.;
BRITISH-AMERICAN OIL CO. LTD.;
NORTHERN ELECTRIC CO LTD.;
COMPUTING DEVICES OF CANADA;
ALLAN CRAWFORD ASSOCIATES LTD.;
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LTD.
ABREX SPECIALTY COATINGS LTD., OAKVILLE
DEADLINE DATES FOR PHYSICS IN CANADA
The deadline dates for the submission of material for publication in
Physics in Canada are as follows: Autumn—August 20; Winter—
November 5; Spring—January 7; Summer—April 1. The Editor would
be pleased to publish articles of general interest describing interesting
developments or progress in physics.
About the Association
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICISTS invites applications for membership from physicists, scientists and engineers whose work is related
to physics, from teachers of physics and from university students studying physics or an allied course. Besides organizing an annual congress
and special symposia of its subject divisions, the association is active in
supporting High School and University Education in Physics by organizing Prize Examinations and in encouraging students to embark upon
physics as a career. All members receive the association's own bulletin,
Physics in Canada, and membership lists from time to time. Arrangements have been made so that members may subscribe to various
journals at reduced cost. During 1965, these include Canadian Journal
of Earth Sciences, Canadian Journal oj Physics, Contemporary Physics,
and The Physics Teacher.
Membership is available in four grades—full member, associate member, student member and corporate member.
Subject divisions of Theoretical Physics, Medical Physics and Earth
Physics are active. When demand warrants, other divisions may be
formed.
For further details regarding membership in the Association write
the Registrar, Canadian Association of Physicists, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario, or see the nearest Council member.
The annual membership fees of the Association are as follows: Full
members $13.00; Associate members $6.00; Student members $2.00.
Arrangements for corporate membership should be made by contacting
Dr. R. H. Hay, Aluminum Company of Canada, Kingston, Ontario.
President: P. Lorrain, University of Montreal. Past President:
L. Katz, University of Saskatchewan. Vice-President: R. E. Bell, McGill University.
Secretary: A. C. H. Hallett, University of Toronto. Treasurer: C. V. Stager,
McMaster University. Directors: H. L. Welsh, University of Toronto; C. Fremont,
Laval University; Miss M. Hoeksema, University of Western Ontario. Division
Chairmen: R. A. Beique, Montreal General Hospital, Medical and Biological
Physics; E. W. Vogt, Chalk River, Theoretical Physics; J. A. Jacobs, University of
British Columbia, Earth Physics. Registrar: R. G. Summers-Gill, McMaster University. Editor: A. Vallance Jones, University of Saskatchewan.
C.A.P. COUNCIL. B.C. and Yukon: R. Barrie, R. M. Pearce. Alberta: W. K. Dawson
and F. Terentiuk. Sask. and Man.: L. H. Greenberg, J. M. Vail. S.W. Ontario:
P. A. Fraser, L. Krause. Central Ontario: J. C. Stryland, Fr. R. Leclaire. Eastern
Ontario: E. P. Hincks, G. C. Hanna. Quebec: P. Marmet, R. Levesque. New
Brunswick and Newfoundland: S. W. Breckon, A. E. Boone. Nova Scotia and
P.E.I.: W. J. Archibald, C. R. Mann. Executive Address: Dept. of Physics,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.
C.A.P. EXECUTIVE.
The Origin of the Solar System*
Some Speculations
G. M. GRIFFITHS
University of British Columbia
THIS PAPER BEGINS with a brief review of some of the well known facts
about the solar system emphasizing those aspects that must be explained
by any theory about the origin of the system. Next some of the older
theories are introduced along with their deficiencies. Finally an outline
is presented of some new ideas that go a long way toward providing a
more comprehensive "guestimate" about the origin than has existed
heretofore. Since only one solar system is available for study at the
present time, much of what can be said about the history of this unique
system must remain in the realm of speculation.
The sun-centered or heliocentric view of the solar system, pioneered
by the studies of Galileo, Tycho, Brahe and Kepler became firmly
established in physics law only after Newton's discovery of gravitation
and the conclusion that it was the sun, by far the most massive body in
the solar system, which provided the central controlling force. Observations show that the solar system is not just a random collection of
bodies but an orderly collection with nearly all the motions in or close
to the same plane corresponding to north pointing angular momentum
vectors. The orbital motions which contain most of the angular momentum lie in the same plane within a few degrees, except for the anomalous
planet Pluto, and the orbits are very close to circles. The deviations
from a common direction are quite large for the axial rotations, however, it should be noted that these motions contain a negligible fraction
of the total angular momentum. Uranus with its rotation axis almost in
the plane of its orbit may or may not suggest the intervention of a
Maxwell demon; there is no completely satisfactory explanation for its
motion at the present time. In general the moons of a planet rotate also
in the direct sense except for a number of the outer satellites of the
large planets which move in an opposite or retrograde sense. The
•This is the text of a C.A.P. lecture given in November 1964 on several eastern
campuses.
ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
7
retrograde motions are easily accounted for if it is assumed that these
satellites have been captured from solar orbits originally lying inside
the orbit of the major body where they would have had higher velocities.
There is another regularity in the planetary system, namely the
separation into the high density, inner or terrestrial planets and the low
density, outer or major planets. The terrestrial planets lying close to the
sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars have densities four or five times
that of water while the major planets containing most of the planetary
mass and lying further from the sun have much lower densities comparable to that of the sun itself. Saturn with the lowest density of all
would float on water. It would require a very large tub and a lot of
water to check this point experimentally! The large density differences
among the planets suggest that, if they were condensed from some
common primordial material, there must have been some chemical
fractionation which separated the dense material into the terrestrial
planets. In addition to the planets there are a large number of small
solid bodies called asteroids lying mainly between Mars and Jupiter and
ranging in size from 150 km downwards. These presumably correspond
to material which never condensed into a planet. Finally there is a
system of comets, rather diffuse bodies, within general very elongated
orbits. The comets seem to be rather transitory bodies which break up
and disperse after a few hundred revolutions in the inner part of the
solar system, the remains being seen as meteor showers when the earth
passes through the orbit of a dispersed comet. Since comets do not last
indefinitely and there are quite a few known, there must be a supply of
cometary material somewhere in or just outside the solar system.
One final property of the solar system which is particularly important
because it has been a stumbling block for most theories is the fact that
though the sun contains 700 times more mass than the planets, the
planetary material contains nearly all the angular momentum, 200 times
more than the sun. It is not easy to conceive of a process that could lead
to such an unequal distribution of the angular momentum, especially if
one assumes that the sun and planets were formed together in the same
process.
Attempts to explain the origin of the solar system fall into two classes.
The sun-first class in which it is assumed that the planets were formed
after the sun became a normal star and the common-origin theories in
which it is assumed that sun and planets were formed together. Among
the sun-first theories, the colliding star theory seems to have been most
popular particularly among non-scientists. This theory assumes that
another star passed close to the sun and the gravitational forces drew
material out of one or other of the stars, part of which condensed into
8
PHYSICS IN CANADA
the planets. Apart from its vanishingly small probability this theory does
not give an explanation of the chemical fractionation or of the large
planetary angular momentum. Another theory that fails for similar and
other reasons is that the planets represent a fragment left behind by the
supernova explosion of a large companion star to the sun. The observation that binary stars are more common than single stars lends credence
to this but no satisfactory model has been presented for the condensation
of the material into planets. Finally, among sun-first theories is the
suggestion that the sun picked up planetary material by gravitational
accretion as it travelled through space. Alfvén has worked out a mechanism involving magnetic fields and relative ionization characteristics to
get the required chemical fractionation into this model but the angular
momentum still presents difficulties.
The first among the common-origin theories was the Laplace nebular
hypothesis proposed about 1800. Laplace envisaged a cooling and
contracting nebula that threw off rings of a matter due to its rotation.
These rings were supposed to have formed the planets while the central
core formed the sun. Maxwell raised the objection that gaseous material
under these conditions could not have condensed but would rather have
been dispersed in the gravitational field of a large central body. He came
to this conclusion after a detailed study of Saturn's rings whose beauty
he admired in the telescope and puzzled over in his mind, finally concluding that in order to be stable the rings had to be made of solid
particles. Von Weizacker tried to overcome Maxwell's objections by
suggesting that differential rotation rates of material at different distances
from the sun would set up eddies which might condense. None of these
ideas has been able to account for both the angular momentum and the
chemical fractionation in a really satisfactory way.
A further clue to the timing of events came to hand after the discovery
of radioactivity and Einstein's statement of the equivalence of mass and
energy. From a study of the rate at which uranium decays away to lead
and observations of lead to uranium ratios in rocks of the earth's crust
it is possible to date the solidification of the earth at about 5 X 10®
years ago. Second from the rate at which the sun gives off energy it is
possible to make a rough estimate of the age of the sun. At the earth the
sun delivers about 2 calories of energy per square centimeter per minute.
Taking into account that the sun delivers the same energy into all
directions in space and converting this energy loss to mass loss, it is
found that the sun loses 5 million tons of its material every second. In
spite of this rapid loss the disappearance of the sun is not imminent for
its mass is 2 X 1027 tons which means it could in principle last for 1013
years. However, known nuclear processes can only convert about 1%
9
ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
11
of the mass to energy which reduces the possible age to about 10 years.
From our present knowledge of the sun and its state of development it
appears to have burnt up 10 or 20% of its nuclear energy which suggests
a present age of about 1010 years. This is comparable to the age of the
earth suggesting that the earth and other planets were formed at roughly
the same time as the sun. The question then is how, from this common
origin, did the angular momentum of the system get so unevenly
distributed over the mass?
About 1959 Professor Fred Hoyle, a theoretical astrophysicist in
Cambridge, England, pointed out that most theories of the origin of the
solar system started with the assumption of some unique set of conditions. Because of the ad hoc character of the initial conditions assumed,
these attempts constituted an unsatisfactory basis for a theory. Hoyle
said we should look at the environment of the sun now and ask how it
could be formed from that environment; in this way it is possible to
start from a non-arbitrary set of initial conditions. Now the sun is one
star towards the outer edge of a flattened disc of about 1011 stars which
we call our galaxy. The galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and
10,000 light years thick and contains, in addition to stars, clouds of gas
and dust. At the distance of the sun the galaxy rotates at about 10 -15
radians per second, corresponding to a rotational period of 2 X 10®
years and about 50 revolutions since the sun was formed. Now if a
sample of galactic gas with the mass of the sun and rotating with the
angular velocity of the galaxy, starts to condense, conservation of angular
momentum results in an increasing angular velocity for the contracting
gas cloud. Hoyle has shown that once the contraction has reduced the
radius of the cloud to about 40 times the radius of the present sun, which
is about half way out to the planet mercury, the angular velocity of the
cloud would be very large and an equatorial bulge or disc would form.
Let us assume that this disc contained 1% of the mass of the cloud,
that is 1 % of the mass of the sun, or 3300 earth masses. Now from the
present composition of solar material, observed by studying the spectrum
of sunlight, we know that 0.1 % of solar material is in the form of Mg,
Si and Fe elements. Therefore the disc would contain about 3.3 earth
masses of Mg Si and Fe, enough to make up the terrestrial planets with
about the right density and composition. Clearly then the assumption
that the solar disc contained 1% of the solar mass is not an arbitrary
one. The question then is how did the heavy elements get separated
from the 3300 earth masses of gas, preponderantly hydrogen, and get
formed into the planets? And what happened to the rest of the disc
material which had a mass seven or eight dmes the total mass of the
planets? There are two possible answers to this last question. One which
10
PHYSICS IN CANADA
says the excess material was returned to the sun and the other which says
it was ejected from the solar system. The last answer will turn out on
Hoyle's model to be more likely. We also have to explain how the
material of the major planets like Jupiter and Saturn condensed so far
away from the sun and how they got such a large share of the angular
momentum.
An important factor omitted from the description of the initial
galactic conditions is the presence of a small magnetic field in the
galaxy, of the order of 10 -5 gauss. It is believed that this field plays an
important role in the structure of the galaxy. At the low initial density
of the gas cloud even a small amount of ionization of the matter, produced for example by ultra violet light from the stars, will result in a
coupling of the magnetic field to the matter or vice versa depending on
how you look at it. As the gas cloud condenses the magnetic field trapped
in the gas will be compressed and strengthened. At some stages of the
condensation there may be significant slippage of the field lines with
respect to the matter. However, at the stage of condensation when the
equatorial bulge forms, the magnetic field will be at least several orders
of magnitude stronger than the initial galactic field and this will have
very important consequences.
As the disc forms it will rotate more slowly than the core being
further from the centre. This differential rotation results in the magnetic
field lines connecting disc to core material becoming wound up many
times. Now if we consider a pictorial view of the magnetic field as was
done by Faraday, then there is a lengthwise tension and a sideways
repulsion in the fictitious magnetic field "lines", and the tension in the
lines exerts a decelerating torque on the core and an accelerating torque
on the disc material. The net result is to transfer angular momentum
from the core material to the disc material. Or in terms of energy,
kinetic energy of core rotation is converted to magnetic energy in the
wound up field and this goes into increasing the potential energy of the
disc material as it moves out taking up angular momentum.
At this early stage the temperature of the surface of the core or
proto-sun might have been about 500° K. As the disc material moved out
the highest melting point materials silicates, magnesium, oxides and
metals, iron being predominant, would condense out, if not already
solids, and grow in size so that they would eventually be left behind by
the outflowing gas. This would form the material for the terrestrial
planets. At greater distances where temperatures were lower carbon and
nitrogen combined with the abundant hydrogen in the form of methane
and ammonia would condense. Carbon and nitrogen being much more
abundant than the iron-silicates the bodies so formed would have been
ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
11
large enough to gravitationally accrete a large amount of hydrogen and
helium leading to the low density major planets Jupiter and Saturn.
Uranus and Neptune with higher densities and smaller masses presumably accreted less hydrogen and helium partly because of the lower
gravity and partly because they may have collected together only after
the hydrogen and helium had been swept further out. Of the original
3300 earth masses of disc material postulated in order to provide enough
material for the terrestrial planets, the planetary system only accounts
for some 450 earth masses. Much of the hydrogen and helium presumably escaped from the limits of the solar system where the gravitational
field of the sun was weak. It is possible that a significant amount may
still be contained at the limits of the system in a form that supplies
material for the comets. This material could be perturbed in its motion
by the motion of the major planets so that occasionally some moves
into the inner part of the solar system to make a few hundred revolutions
as a comet before being broken up and dispersed.
At this stage it should be apparent to every first year physics student
that the process of conserving angular momentum implied by this model
does not necessarily conserve energy. In fact for the process to proceed
in the way outlined there must be a mechanism for disposing of a large
excess of kinetic energy. The mechanism for this can again be found in
the magnetic field coupling, for in the region close to the core which
forms the early sun the shear velocity in the mass flow due to differential
rotation would be large so the flow would be turbulent. This would lead
to rapidly varying or turbulent magnetic fields. By Faraday's law of
electromagnetic induction the rapidly changing magnetic fields would
produce strong electric fields which can very efficiently dissipate energy
by accelerating charged particles to energies in the neighborhood of
hundreds of Mev. These particles would produce further changed particles by ionization as they bombard the matter around the sun making
even more charged particles available for acceleration.
At this state it seems desirable to ask whether the hypothetical model
suggested here can be substantiated by any evidence. The answer is yes.
Substantial evidence has been provided as a result of a very fruitful
collaboration between Hoyle the astrophysicist and two other scientists,
William Fowler, a nuclear physicist, and Jesse Greenstein, an astronomer, both from the California Institute of Technology.
The first evidence comes from a study of a number of recently formed
hot stars known as T-Tauri stars. These stars are in very rapid rotation
and have magnetically turbulent surfaces suggestive of an early state of
the solar system according to Hoyle's model. One of the most interesting
and at the same time puzzling characteristics of some of these stars is
12
PHYSICS IN CANADA
that they have as much as ten times more lithium in their surfaces
than is in the gas from which the stars were formed. It is possible to
observe the lithium in the gas separate from that in the start because the
stars being large and hot radiate the surrounding gas with ultraviolet
light causing the gas atoms to emit light characteristic of those atoms.
The spectrum of this light can be compared with that from the surfaces
of the stars. This enhanced lithium in the surfaces of T-Tauri stars suggests that a special mechanism exists in the surface of the star for making
lithium. This was very exciting because it in turn suggests a solution to
another problem, that had bothered nuclear physicists for some years.
This concerns the abundances of the elements on the earth. Only a brief
reference to the background of this problem can be made here.
It is believed that all the elements heavier than hydrogen on the earth,
including those of which you and I are made were produced from
hydrogen by nuclear reactions in the stars. These nucleosynthesis processes are basically understood in terms of nuclear reactions which have
been studied in some detail in the laboratory. As a result of this
understanding one can predict roughly the life history of a star. The
abundances of the elements that it produces, and the total energy release
produced by the element formation processes can also be predicted.
Towards the end of the life of a larger star a stage is reached rather
suddenly when the star blows up in what is known as a supernova
explosion. Such explosions which occur every few hundred years in a
galaxy may result in the star producing for a short time nearly as much
light as all the other stars in the galaxy. During a supernova explosion
the star injects into the interstellar gas its supply of heavy elements. The
expanding nebulosity known as the Crab nebula is the still visible remains of a supernova explosion which occurred in our galaxy in A.D.
1054. As a result of such explosions the interstellar gas is enriched in
heavy elements throughout the life of the galaxy and later stars have
more heavy elements than those formed earlier. Our sun has nearly 10
times as much heavy element content as some of the very old globular
cluster stars in our galaxy suggesting that it is a more recent star.
Many studies have been made of the abundances of the elements on
the earth in order to check the predictions of the nucleosynthesis models.
Actually because a lot of chemical fractionation has occurred in the
earth after its formation and because we are only able to study the
crustal fraction in detail, it is not possible to get complete data from
the earth alone. However this data is supplemented by data obtained
from meteorites on the assumption that these never belonged to bodies
large enough to produce much fractionation. A very disturbing feature
ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
13
of the terrestrial-meteoritic abundance data is the large amount of D, Li,
Be and B found. According to the nucleosynthesis theories these elements
should not have been produced in significant quantities in stars and even
if produced they should have been very quickly destroyed at the
temperatures required for producing other elements. Further, where
comparisons are possible it is found that these light elements are present
in terrestrial-meteoric material in higher percentages than in the present sun. The earth is very deficient in hydrogen compared to the sun.
Any uncombined hydrogen would be lost to space from the upper
atmosphere. Most of the hydrogen is in the form of water on the earth.
More might have been retained by forming water with the oxygen in
the crust and in the atmosphere. However, Hoyle's model suggests that
it was largely swept away by the magnetic coupling before the earth
was formed. In comparison with the sun there is a marked surplus of
lithium and berrylium on the earth. The deficiency of carbon on the
earth can be understood in terms of Hoyle's model since the temperature was too high in the region of the earth for condensation of significant amounts of carbon compounds. For the silicon and iron group
elements the abundances on the earth and in the sun agree relative to
silicon indicating that as far as these high melting point elements and
compounds are concerned the earth represents a sample of solar
material consistent with Hoyle's model.
It should now be clear that the same mechanism that leads to an
excess of lithium in the T-Tauri stars may also account for the excess
D, Li, Be and B on the earth. Fortunately Hoyle's model has built into
it just such a mechanism. The high energy particles accelerated by
turbulent magnetic fields at the surface of the early proto-sun would
bombard all surrounding material. According to Hoyle's model much
of the material in the neighborhood of the sun consists of the first
condensed heavy element fraction. When this is bombarded by high energy
protons the nuclei are broken apart by what are known as spallation
reactions. The chips knocked off the heavy nuclei consist of neutrons,
protons, deuterons, Li, Be and B among other light nuclei. This spallation
process can presumably account for the lithium produced on the T-Tauri
stars and also for the excess D, Li, Be, B found on the earth assuming
the excess was produced at an early stage of the solar system when the
sun was getting rid of energy by accelerating particles to high energy.
Professor Fowler at Cal. Tech. has referred to the production of the
elements in the stars as Genesis and the latter process of producing
deuterium and other light elements as Deuteronomy.
Now if a nuclear physicist familiar with spallation reactions looked
14
PHYSICS IN CANADA
at the abundances of the light nuclei he would not be happy with the
above explanation. He knows spallation reactions produce approximately equal numbers of light nuclei if these are closely the same in
mass but he sees Li6 much less than Li7 and B10 less than B 11 . However, if he was also familiar with neutron reactions he would know
that compared to all neighboring nuclei Li8 and B1" have very large
cross sections or probabilities for being destroyed by low energy or
thermal neutrons as a result of Li 6 (n, a ) T and B 10 (n, a)Li 7 reactions.
These reactions have cross sections of 945 and 3810 barns respectively
whereas neighboring nuclei have cross sections of at most 1 barn or are
energetically forbidden. Therefore the presence of a slow neutron flux
would greatly deplete Li6 and B 10 and their low observed abundances
then suggest that at some stage the material was subjected to a low
energy neutron flux. Now one of the commonest spallation products is
neutrons, however, these neutrons are fast and must be slowed down
to thermal velocities if they are to be significantly and preferentially
absorbed by Li6 and B10. Hydrogen is one of the most efficient slowing
down media for neutrons and certainly some hydrogen was present in
terrestrial material in the form of water which we now find in our
oceans. At the early stage of condensation that concerns us here this
would have been in the form of ice mixed with the Mg Si and Fe
elements. Therefore fast spallation neutrons would have been slowed
down and preferentially captured in Li® and B 10 depleting them and
producing extra Li7 from the B 10 . Also some neutrons would be captured
by hydrogen to produce deuterium in addition to that produced by the
spallation process. The cross section for neutron capture in hydrogen is
small, only 0.33 barn so even with the large amount of hydrogen present
not too many neutrons would have been lost this way.
Without going into the rather complex details here, it is possible to
calculate, from a knowledge of spallation cross sections and neutron
absorption cross sections, that the material of the earth was subjected to
a total neutron flux of about 107 neutrons per square centimeter per
second for an assumed period of about 107 years in order to produce
the observed abundances of the light elements from the primordial
heavier elements. However, a number of discrepancies indicate that not
all the material could have been subjected to this flux. For instance the
ratio of deuterium to hydrogen, calculated on the assumption that all the
material was irridiated and taking into account production of D by
spallation and by neutron capture in hydrogen, is 1.5 X 10-3 while the
terrestrial ratio is 1.5 X 10 -4 , suggesting that only 1/10 of the material
was irradiated. Another case which indicates the same thing is the
observation of the isotope Gd 187 on the earth. Since this has the huge
ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
15
neutron cross section of 240,000 barns it would have been completely
depleted if all the material was subject to the above neutron flux. This
leads to the conclusion that on the average the icy matrix of material
that eventually made up the earth was of such a size at this early stage
that the high energy protons from the sun could only penetrate into part
of the material. With ranges in the material of about 10 to 40 cm this
means that the chunks of material were on the average of metric
dimensions. They have been called "metric planetesimals". There is
much more detailed nuclear evidence than present space permits going
into which supports the various assumptions made in this model. This
evidence is collected in a number of papers by Fowler, Greenstein and
Hoyle published after 1962.
There is considerable uncertainty as to how the metric planetesimals
actually collected together to form planets as there is also uncertainty as
to how the original condensation of an interstellar gas cloud begins.
However, accepting the stars as evidence of the latter process and the
planets as evidence of the former we have a fairly complete hypothesis
for the in between steps supported by a considerable body of evidence.
To summarize we imagine the solar system to have formed as a
result of the condensation of a normal galactic gas cloud. When the
condensation reached about 40 times the size of the present sun an
equatorial disc formed because of the high angular velocity resulting
from angular momentum conservation. The angular momentum of the
core or proto-sun was transferred to the disc material through a magnetic
coupling. This lead the disc material containing about 1 % of the mass
of the sun to move away from the sun. The heavy element fraction
condensed out first at the higher temperatures to form the terrestrial
planets close to the sun. At further distances and lower temperatures
compounds of carbon and nitrogen with hydrogen condensed out to
form the major planets along with considerable gravitationally accreted
hydrogen and helium. In addition excess energy was disposed of by
acceleration of high energy particles at the surface of a turbulent and
magnetically active proto-sun. These particles bombarded the surrounding
material including that from which the earth is made producing an
excess of light elements by spallation reactions. This excess of light
elements, D, Li, Be and B, over that which could be expected in the
primodial material is indeed found on the earth as well as in the surfaces
of T-Tauri stars, stars which themselves may be in the early stages of
producing planetary systems of their own. How much of this is speculation remains to be seen.
In conclusion it should be pointed out that though these ideas seem
to give a complete and tidy picture of the origin of the solar system this
PHYSICS IN CANADA
16
in no way guarantees that they constitute the only explanation possible.
Indeed these ideas differ in major ways from another view put forward
by Dr. A. G. W. Cameron previously at Chalk River and now at the
Goddard Space Research Centre, a branch of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration in New York. Cameron assumes that the solar
system was formed from a cloud of gas which contained many radioactivities of relatively long half life which remained from a supernova
explosion. In this way he accounts for many of the isotope anomalies
that are attributed to spallation reactions by Fowler, Greenstein and
Hoyle. In addition he suggests that the collapse of an interstellar gas
cloud may have been initiated by the action of the supernova explosion
and that the cloud would need to be much larger, about 10® sun masses
before it can undergo gravitational collapse. This model requires a short
time between collapse of the cloud and condensation of solids in order
to trap radioactive elements left over from the initiating nucleosynthesis
event. Also it assumes that the nebular disc contains most of the mass of
the contracting gas cloud and that most of this disc material is ejected
as the sun forms leaving behind a remnant which goes to make up the
planets. The differences between these theories suggest many possible
experimental checks which will challenge future space scientists.
REFERENCES
Specific
F. Hoyle. Quart. J. R. Astr. Soc. 1, 28, 1960.
W. A. Fowler, J. L. Greenstein, and F. Hoyle. Geophysical Journal of the Royal
Astr. Soc. 6, 148, 1962.
A. G. W. Cameron. Icarus 1, 13, 1962.
W. H. McCrea. Contemporary Physics 4, 278, 1963.
General
F. Hoyle. The Nature of the Universe—Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.
. Frontiers of Astronomy—Heineman, London, 1955.
H. Bondi. Cosmology—Cambridge Monographs, 2nd ed., 1960.
J. Wood. Scientific American, Oct. 1963, Chondrites and Chondrules.
H. Brown. Scientific American, April 19:57, The Age of the Solar System.
Department of Physics
LOYOLA COLLEGE
Montreal 28, P.Q. Canada
Applications are invited for:
Experimental Nuclear Physicist: Preferably familiar with work connected
with a neutron generator. A qualified candidate could start as assistant or
associate professor for which the salary scales begin at $7800 and $9800
respectively.
Enquiries should be addressed to: Chairman, Department of Physics
The Biology of Industrial Research*
Part I - The Need for Size
R. W. JACKSON
MY FIRST THOUGHT was to title this talk "Nuclear Physics" on the
reasoning that my theme would be physics research as the nucleus of
growth in an industrial nation. But, though such a title might have
brought together most of the physicists in Canada, they would have
assembled under deliriously false expectadons of what they would hear.
Finally I chose the above hardly less misleading dtie in order to
emphasize the organic way in which scientific research works to bring
about the growth of new technology and new industry. There is always
a temptation to divide human activities into neat compartments, but the
compartmentalizing mind often carves up nature in artificial ways and
misses essential features of its way of working.
Scientific research, for example, in its relation to industrial production,
does not in fact work as some mechanical machine or cement mixer
churning out "results" which are then used or not used by "Industry".
Certainly, in any good research laboratory, there appear every now and
then discernibly new ideas which may be the basis for radically new
products or processes, but that is only part of the story. Rather than be
led astray by long-ingrained clichés in our thinking, we are more likely
to reach an intelligent appraisal of our problems if we keep in mind that
scientific research works as one vital part in a living system, an organic
process, where every part contributes to the whole, and the whole
organism grows as a living plant or animal grows. From this point of
view one of the first questions we are then led to ask is whether this
organism in Canada is, on the whole, an intelligent, technically skilled
organism, capable of rapidly learning and evolving; and this, I think,
puts the question in the correct terms.
This organic point of view also suggests that the problems of research
in industry cannot be discussed in isolation from the nature of research
in university or government laboratories or, indeed, from the scientific,
economic, and trade policies of the country as a whole.
•This article is based upon Dr. Jackson's paper presented as part of the
Symposium on Physics in Canada at the 1964 Congress.
18
PHYSICS IN CANADA
Thus I could be led to attempt to examine the ultimate aims of our
civilization—is the quest for pure knowledge our highest good? Is the
teaching of more teachers to teach teachers the primary task of physicists
in Canada? And so on. But feeling that many of us are in a pragmatic
mood these days, I shall try to keep my thinking oriented to economic
prosperity and industrial strength as the most immediate and important
objectives.
I hope, incidentally, to present a picture of where Canada's establishment in scientific and industrial research stands today, and to draw
attention to some glaring inadequacies; principally, however, I hope to
present a philosophy to guide the corrective and constructive action we
must take.
To study the biological system, of which science and industry are
functioning organs, it stands to reason that we shall learn the most by
looking at it where it has achieved its fullest expression and most
advanced development. We know that properties often appear in higher
animals which are unobservable or only dimly foreshadowed in more
primitive forms of life. There is hardly any question that the place to
look is the United States.
There, the fertile environment and enriched feeding have brought
along the growth of a scientific and industrial research structure of unparalleled size, efficiency, and excitement, such that for a number of
years it has been drawing the brightest minds from all over the world.
In fact, we seem to be caught up in one of those sociological feedback
systems sketched by Maruyama ( 1 ), this being the case where the richer
country supports science on a larger scale, thereby attracting all the
scientists from the poorer countries, and thus becoming richer still.
A number of countries are becoming seriously concerned about the
migration of brains, and how to break the cycle. Canada is one of the
countries the most affected though, apparently, one of those showing the
least concern. In the U.K. the brain drain has excited so much alarm
that the political parties have made major planks in their platforms for
the coming election* out of the issue of the support of science (2). But,
it is characteristic that, as Stevan Dedijer says (3), "the awareness of
the loss incurred by a country through the migration of scientists seems
to be strongest to-day everywhere in the professional community. Higher
level government officials—with a number of important exceptions, as
for example in India, in Great Britain and other European countries—
are still on the whole not concerned about the migration of scientists.
•Now past, and won by the party with the most consistent program for science
and technology.
BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
19
This is especially true for Governments without a national science policy.
Such countries can be losing scientists for years before the problem
becomes a public issue."
Until recently much of the attitude in officialdom in the U.K. has
been, as it has been here, more flippant than serious, and inclined to
magnify the bright side out of all proportion. Thus such remarks as that
from the Duke of Edinburgh that "the brain drain was a very nice
compliment to our educational system" inspired the observation by Sir
Bernard Lovell (4) : "The attitude implicit in such comments shows a
deep lack of comprehension of the significance of science in the modern
community. America accepted the challenge of the Sputnik, the leaders
of Britain did not. It was quickly appreciated in the United States that
a revolution was needed throughout its science and technology—of which
space was merely the immediate showpiece." For "leaders of Britain"
read "leaders of Canada".
The revolution in science and technology in the U.S. has been
accomplished by an empirical process. But in the course of government
spending of large amounts of funds in every conceivable direction that
would contribute to getting the job done, certain particularly effective
patterns of organization have been emerging. They are most obvious in
certain areas such as Boston, New Jersey and the eastern seaboard,
Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and so on. Just as the
phenomenon of Mind did not make its appearance on the Earth until
living systems evolved with sufficiently complex nervous systems, and
sufficiently large and convoluted brains, so we could not expect this
powerful new kind of societal mind-structure to make its appearance
until civilization had developed sufficiently complex and large industrial
and educational concentrations. Now that the pattern is becoming
obvious, however, more and more areas in the U.S. are trying to construct
it deliberately, rather than just waiting for it to happen. There were, at
last count (5), at least 91 "Research Parks" established or a-building in
the U.S. Not all of them will be successful, of course, because not all of
them will have the right formula, but there is widespread and growing
consciousness that something of this nature is the pattern of the future.
In Canada, we can perhaps count two or three industrial research
parks, pretty well in the formative stages. Most measures we can put on
the situation show a similar ratio of activity in the two countries (after
adjusting for population)—a similar degree of backwardness in Canada.
I have heard, and have been involved in, several fruitless arguments
about which should come first: research, or the industry that wants it.
The truth of the matter must be: in some measure, both. The brain and
20
PHYSICS IN CANADA
the nervous system must evolve together. Or look at Research and
Industry as two logs in a fire, feeding heat to each other and generating
a roaring blaze; one log by itself would smoulder or go out.
If either should come first, however, it would be research. There can
be no doubt of the seminal role of Terman's Communications Laboratory
(established at Stanford University in 1924) in the later establishment
of electronics industries in the San Francisco area (16). From those
roots has grown, for example, the Stanford University Industrial Park.
Established in 1951, it now has 43 occupants, including the Lockheed
Aircraft Corp., Beckman Instruments Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Control
Data Corp., Varian Associates, Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. (5).
William Hewlett, David Packard, and the Varian brothers were among
Terman's graduates.
To look down our noses and say that all of that R & D and sophisticated technology in the U.S. was and is based on Government expenditure on defence, and missiles, and putting a man on the moon, and has
no greater significance, would be to make a serious mistake, and to
underestimate it dangerously. Sir Bernard is quite right to say "space
was (is) merely the immediate showpiece". In fact, the U.S. now shows
signs of tapering off its expenditures on missile systems and bombs, and
shifting emphasis. Research centres, such as MIT and Stanford, are
shaping up attacks, growing in scope and importance and size, on such
matters as molecular biology, artificial homeostasis using electronic
controls with living systems, computer data processing in medicine.
Note that I said "shifting emphasis". So far as I can detect, the U.S.
has no intention of doing away with the enormous concentrations of
brains it has gathered and developed.
Regardless of the historical motives by which those concentrations of
brains were built up, it must now be accepted that they are being
integrated into a massive recognition that educated intelligence is the ultimate source of strength of a modern nation. It has been estimated (7),
for example, that the production, distribution, and consumption of
"knowledge" in all its forms accounts for 29% of the Gross National
Product of the U.S. As evidence that rockets and missiles do not constitute the only area of technical activity in the U.S., I note that the
U.S. federal budget for medical research is very nearly one billion
dollars a year (8). The budget of the Canadian Medical Research
Council last year was under $5 million.
What are the essential characteristics of the research-industrial complex? A recent series of articles in The New Yorker magazine (9) gave
a very good description of the R & D-based industries around Boston,
their relation to MIT and Harvard, the people involved, and the
BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
21
atmosphere in which they work. One could sense the vitality of the
organism, and that here was something new on the face of the earth.
True, one can look back with hindsight now and see that it was foreshadowed dimly or in a few partial respects in Athens, in Alexandria, in
Venice, Florence, Rome, and so on, but never in such a state of full
development that the anatomy of the beast could be clearly seen, and the
functions of its various parts understood. Indeed there is such a difference
in scale that there can hardly be a real comparison. One can see that
the phenomenon was given a giant boost, perhaps the modern version
was born, during the Second World War. Recall such organizations as
T.R.E. in Britain, the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and the Manhattan
Project to develop the atomic bomb. Canada has one example still
living, perhaps only one example, in the Chalk River Laboratories.
There can be no doubt that scientific education and scientific research
stand at the core of growth of a modern industrial country, and at the
core of a modern nation's military security. For those reasons, as well
as the feature that science has grown big—it requires bigger and more
expensive equipment to keep pushing the frontiers back, and larger and
larger numbers of workers as it proliferates into ever more ramifications
and applications—science has come to figure appreciably in national
policies and in national budgets, and can no longer be left entirely to
the pleasure of university professors and private industries. I think we
all recognize these changing features of our times. They are well described in such places as the OECD report on "Science and the Policies
of Governments" (10) and Holton's essay on "Scientific Research &
Scholarship" (11).
But although we recognize these things in a general and intuitive way,
I suspect that when it comes down to understanding the detailed workings, and what the essential features are, and what one can do in a
given milieu, rather than just wait for things to happen (or not happen)
by themselves, our understanding may leave something to be desired.
So I want to draw attention to some of the features of the modern
science-industry organism which are important, and why they are important. In particular I wish to consider: large size of laboratories; high
concentration of intellect in one geographical area; effective coupling,
motivation and communication into an output of industrial products.
The importance of size to industrial research seems to have been very
little appreciated in Canada. The myth of the solitary brilliant professor
in his one-room laboratory lingers on. Here I do not wish to be misinterpreted. We have not yet found a way to make ten mediocre brains
the equal of one genius, or to obtain a brain that is not the property of
an individual. But we have found ways of stimulating brilliant minds to
22
PHYSICS IN CANADA
be still more brilliant, and ways of amplifying their effectiveness by the
assistance of lesser minds. We have reached the point in several fields
where further progress can only be made by means of great machines,
and complex technologies, operated by hordes of engineers and technicians. And we have to recognize that research, particularly in the
industrial context, is competitive, and must proceed at a certain pace if
it is to be worth doing at all.
Consider the following practical case. Suppose in an industrial laboratory you decide you should do research on gallium arsenide diode
lasers. In a university you probably would not approach it that way. You
would start with an individual and it might or might not be his pleasure
to work on gallium arsenide lasers, and it really wouldn't matter very
much if he chose something else. When he had obtained his doctorate
his work might or might not be continued by someone else. In an
industrial context the program is serious business. A general area of
research is chosen because it is potentially important in the industry,
and a particular company wishes to develop the knowledge and the skills
to find and apply the new ideas. To direct the work on that one topic
will require, say, one Ph.D. physicist. But, besides the point of needing
some stimulation and discussion with colleagues, there is the point that
at least one additional Ph.D., younger perhaps, is needed as insurance
against total loss to the company of all acquired know-how if one man
should leave (job-changing is a feature of North American industrial
society with which we have to live). Then, on such a topic, research is
only possible if considerable skill and art in advanced technology is on
hand, to grow gallium arsenide crystals and fabricate the experimental
devices. This will involve at least another physicist or chemist or metallurgist, and two or three assistants. Thus our minimum establishment to
attempt research, industrial style, on this one topic will be of the order
of two or three Ph.D.s, an M.Sc., say, and four technical assistants. At
current rates, and typical laboratory overhead costs (not spread over an
enormous teaching plant or hidden in the accounts of other departments)
that in dollars amounts to between $120,000 and $160,000 a year. (Of
course that one Ph.D. could do everything himself, serially, but over a
quite uncompetitive length of time. )
That is for only one topic at a given time, and an industrial-type solid
state laboratory concerned with keeping itself contemporary in the
present milieu must have work going on on several topics at once. If
the aim of the research is the generation of new products, there must
be a sufficient number of projects going on at once to make the probabilities of pay-off reasonable, and the research must be supported by an
adequate development organization. The cost of development—tying
BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
23
down the "little" problems—often far exceeds the cost of the original
research. It is not hard to conclude that the required establishment to
attempt research and development in contemporary industrial semiconductor physics should be not less than 15 or 20 full-time professionals, and an operating budget of the order of a million dollars a year.
Anything less will be a transient affair, of highly uncertain outcome.
The research laboratory can be somewhat smaller, of course, when
its only function is a learning function, to keep an engineering operation
well informed—as in the case of a subsidiary company which derives all
its new products from the research laboratories of its parent. (A great
deal of Canada's policy on industrial research must hinge on the choice
between those two types of operation as the paradigm for Canadian
industries. )
The lack of appreciation in Canada of the importance of a sufficient
size or scale of operations in the modern game of science and technology
is reflected in the Government spending policies in support of research.
The Electronic Components Research & Development Committee of the
Defence Research Board, for example, virtually the only Canadian
Government agency that lets contracts for 100% support of industrial
research on electronic devices, has less than $500,000 to spend for the
whole of Canada. It supports one man here, one man there, on half a
dozen or more unrelated topics scattered around the field of electronics.
This would be ludicrous, if it were not so pathetic.
With a similar style of thinking, the cost-sharing assistance scheme of
the National Research Council for the encouragement of industrial research is administered with the emphasis on small one-man projects, and
is set up in such a way—in terms of paying the salaries of individuals—
that it is not at all well adapted to the program or technical-group way
of running a research laboratory that is the way of industry. So far as I
can tell, it is borrowed straight from the old grant-to-individuals scheme
for supporting university research, with a little of the NRC postdoctoral fellow program thrown in.
The cost-sharing schemes for supporting industrial research, at the
magical figure of 50-50, are very popular with the Government, as the
custodian of public funds, because the country thus seems to get its
much needed industrial research at half the cost. Government personnel
are surprised that industry does not take up these generous offers with
greater alacrity. Industry, on its side, grumbles that Government already
takes half of all its profits and asks, undoubtedly with some justification,
what Government is doing with those funds (over $1.1 billion yearly in
corporate income taxes) to ensure the future growth of industry. A
businessman would invest those funds in research and in other ways to
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build up his industry and thereby his profits. Government should use
just as canny an eye to see that those funds are being spent in economically productive ways.
The cost-sharing schemes do contain a useful and effective feature,
in that, in the process of enticing a company into spending money on
research, they force the company to begin thinking about research and
to make plans for the future. This is very good and very educational for
industrial management, which in Canada has had little previous incentive
to think about research at all. But it also has an unfortunate drawback.
It brings in the close scrutiny and "where are the profits" attitude of
management from the start—and a management unschooled in research,
at that—and thus greatly increases the difficulties of the scientists trying
to get started on a proper program of long-range research. How different
would be the effect of these schemes in U.S. industry in its present phase,
full of research talent, ideas, and facilities built up over years of government contracting, and with managements looking for ways to exploit
those assets into civilian markets! Viewed against the present desolate
research background in Canada, it is quite another story, and the cost-
1955
'56
'57
'58
'59
'60
'61
'62
'63
'64
'65
'66
CANADA'S R & 0 COMPONENT RELATIVE TO THE U.S. ANO U.K.
FIGURE 1
'67
'68
BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL
RESEARCH
27
sharing schemes in their present form are only one and, in themselves,
relatively ineffective part of the action that is needed, as I showed in an
earlier analysis (12).
When other actions are suggested, inevitably involving the expenditure
of public funds, the first reaction of many Canadians, particularly in
Government, seems to be "Canada can't possibly afford to do such
things—there are so many other demands on our limited funds!" Is this
true?
Figure 1 shows the expenditures in Canada on research and development over the past few years, compared with what the expenditures
would have been if they had followed the U.K. or U.S. pattern relative
to Gross National Product. The "area that might have been" is hatched
in and labelled "Canada's Technological Lag" to emphasize that R & D
is a long-range activity, and cumulative in its effects.
As an indicator of the level of scientific and technological activity in
the country, the graph suggests that the low level relative to other
countries should be a matter for serious national concern. (Sweden,
Japan, Switzerland, and others, not to mention Russia, support an
activity approaching or greater than 2% of GNP.)
As an indication of whether Canada can afford greater expenditures
on science, the graph is graphic. The current gross national product is
running about 42 to 45 billion dollars per year. Two per cent of that,
the point where a modern country might begin to feel it might be pouring
nearly enough of its income back into scientific growth, is $900 million,
which is 500 or 600 million dollars a year higher than the present level.
One wonders at the reluctance of Government to allocate the few more
millions of dollars which would make such a tremendous difference to
the present situation in university research. And one can see that, even
if the DIR and NRC cost-sharing schemes for research in industry
succeeded in spending $10 million between them this year, which they
will not, they would be doing very little to change the picture.
Of course, one does not expect that simply spending money on anything at all, throwing it away, in effect, would automatically bring about
the desired results. But the graph, interpreted as a measure of activity,
suggests strongly that Canadian science at this point needs much more
than the gradual encouragement afforded by industrial cost-sharing, and
a few per cent increase in N.R.C. grants to university research—it needs
a major shot in the arm. The most effective form for that shot in the
arm, I hope to develop in what follows.
One thing is sure. A great deal of money can be wasted in research,
by feeding it in in such a thin trickle that results are always too few and
too late. In the modern industrial world, governments must act as
28
PHYSICS IN CANADA
investors on behalf of industry in such general areas as scientific research,
which are long-term investments affecting the general welfare. And the
over-cautious and over-timid investor, or gambler, is doomed from the
start.
To return to the matter of the need for large size of research
laboratories in the industrial context, there is another important advantage that accrues when a group of working scientists is above a certain
size. A large research laboratory has been compared often enough to a
nuclear reactor that there must be some validity to the comparison which
could be elicited by a proper analysis of the ideational and social interactions among the scientists in the research group. Qualitatively, one
can point out at least the following elements in the situation. (1) The
rate at which a scientist working in isolation will develop his ideas can
be greatly stimulated by association with other scientists, (2) some
stimulation derives from the reading of published literature, but far more
effective is the give-and-take of verbal discussion and blackboard work
with worthy colleagues; thus concentration of brains in geographical
areas and within laboratories is important, (3) conversely, close
communication with scientifically unproductive elements—deadwood,
bureaucratic administrators, clueless managers, etc.—is deadening; thus
the proper selection and organization of the research community is vital,
just as is the design of the nuclear reactor core, (4) as the size of the
community increases, the probability will increase that an idea not
immediately relevant to one man's work will be found stimulating and
applicable by some person in the group; thus the overall efficiency of
the community for maintenance of the idea-reaction will increase with
size, (5) a countervailing factor is that with increasing size the efficiency
of communication will decrease, and thus there will probably exist an
optimum size; the optimum size is likely to depend on the homogeneity
of interests or subject matter, thus is likely to be smaller for pure and
theoretical research than for applied research, (6) regarding the people
with motives toward technology and product development as part of the
total community or social organism, the probability that new knowledge
from research gets put to use somewhere increases with the size of the
technological community, again with the optimum situation depending
on the effectiveness of communication, (7) the industrial effectiveness
of the research also will depend on its relevance, which will depend on
the motivation of the scientists; this will be improved by good coupling
to industrial application, but too strong a coupling will damp the research reaction out of existence; too small a total group will automatically
mean too tight a coupling.
The above list suggests a number of features of large research
BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL
RESEARCH
29
laboratories and large industrial concentradons which cannot exist in
the small. In particular, the bringing together of sufficient numbers of
scientists of selected quality can generate an idea-reaction, a higher rate
of working than achieved by the same number of scientists working
independently. In effect there is generated a higher intellectual temperature or, in the nomenclature of Père Teilhard de Chardin (13), a higher
temperature of the Nôosphere in that region.
The higher pace of research achieved by raising the nootic temperature, the parallel attack on a number of topics, and the effective coupling
to a broad base of industrial technology and application are all features
which we must bring about if we are to move into the present-day world
arena of technological industrial competition.
Naturally, we cannot compete on all fronts. There are some areas of
technology where we can pick and choose our specializations, and some
areas in which we have to work whatever the odds. But how can we make
sure that, in the areas we do emphasize, the research activity will be on
a sufficient scale to bring results, and how can we build it up to that
scale in the shortest possible time? These questions will be pursued
further in the second half of this paper.
REFERENCES
1. Maruyama, M. "The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual
Causal Processes". American Scientist, 51, 164, June, 1963.
2. Maddox, J. "Science Policy Shapes Up as Issue in Coming British Election".
Science, 143, 1146, March 13, 1964.
3. Dedijer, Stevan. "Migration of Scientists: A World-Wide Phenomenon &
Problem". Nature, 201, 964-967, March 7, 1964.
4. Sir Bernard Lovell. "A British 'Brain' Explains the 'Brain Drain'". N.Y.
Times Magazine, March 22, 1964, p. 13.
5. Danilov, V. J. "Sites for Sale—1964 guide to research sites". Industrial
Research, pp. 30-44, May, 1964.
6. Walsh, John. "Stanford: Boom in Electronics in the San Francisco Bay Area
was Ignited Down on 'the farm' ". Science, 143, 1305, March 20, 1964.
7. Machlup, F. "The Production & Distribution of Knowledge in the U.S.".
Princeton University Press, 1962, pp. 374, 399.
8. Viorst, M. "The Political Good Fortune of Medical Research". Science, 144,
267-270, April 17, 1964.
9. Rand, Christopher. "Center of a New World", a series of three essays. The
New Yorker, April 11, 18, 25, 1964.
10. "Science and the Policies of Governments—the Implications of Science and
Technology for National and International Affairs". Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, September, 1963.
11. Holton, G. "Scientific Research and Scholarship—notes toward the design of
proper scales". Daedalus, spring, 1962, pp. 362-399.
12. Jackson, R. W. "The expansion of Industrial Research and Development in
Canada". Canadian Electronics Engineering, pp. 49-51, April, 1962.
13. Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man. Collins, London; Harper,
N.Y., 1959.
C.A.P. Affairs
1965 C.A.P. CONGRESS
(preliminary program)
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER
Wednesday, June 9
1:00-9:00 p.m.
2:00 p.m.
8:00 p.m.
Registration
Meeting of Executive and Council
Joint symposium with the Royal Society of
Canada on Radio Astronomy
Thursday, June 10
8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Registration
9:00 a.m.
Earth Sciences Division symposium on Isotope Geophysics
Nuclear and High Energy Physics: sym9:00 a.m.
posium on Polarized Beams and Targets
General sessions
9:00 a.m.
2:00 p.m.
Earth Sciences Division symposium on
Crustal Structures in Canada
Invited and contributed papers on Radio
2:00 p.m.
Astronomy
Theoretical Physics Division symposium
2:00 p.m.
General sessions
2:00 p.m.
Friday, June 11
9:00 a.m.
2:00 p.m.
7:00 p.m.
Saturday, June 12
9:00 a.m.
9:00 a.m.
2:00 p.m.
General sessions
Presidential address and business meeting
C.A.P. dinner and presentation of awards
"-Onium", a symposium on the various
kinds: positr-, mu-, pi-, and so-.
General sessions
Joint meeting of the old and new Councils
Notes (1) The Division of Medic;il and Biological Physics is not
participating as a body at this Congress. Individual papers
on these topics are still welcome, and a whole session or
sessions will be organized if there are enough such papers.
C.A.P. AFFAIRS
31
(2) The sessions labelled General will in many cases become
specialized by topic after the abstracts are received.
(3) The Local Committee is preparing to exhibit books and
equipment of interest to physicists. Exhibitors should write
to Professor J. B. Warren.
(4) Arrangements are being made for tours to places of interest
to scientists in British Columbia. These, together with housing arrangements, etc., will be announced with the Congress
program.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
INVITATION À PRÉSENTER DES COMMUNICATIONS
L'Association invite les physiciens à présenter des communications de
10 minutes au congrès.
The length allowed for abstracts is 200 words at most.
Prière de les faire parvenir à l'adresse ci-dessous au plus tard le 5
avril:
Professor R. E. Bell,
Foster Radiation Laboratory,
McGill University,
Montreal 2.
Please submit the abstracts in duplicate, typed in the form in which
they have appeared in recent Congress programs. Abstracts may be in
French or English.
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, CALGARY
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSRCS
VACANCIES exist in the department for assistant professors, commencing
September 1965. Candidates whose research interests are in Biophysics,
Magnetic Resonance, Cosmic Radiation, Upper Atmosphere Physics, or
Theoretical Physics will have preference. A Ph.D. degree or equivalent will
normally be required. Initial salary $8,000-$ 10,000, depending on qualifications and experience, with regular annual increments. Grant towards
travelling expenses for married or overseas appointees.
Enquiries or applications should be sent to Professor C. E. Challice,
Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
News
N E W S FROM THE METEOROLOGICAL BRANCH,
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT
Head of the Meteorology and Oceanography
Section at Canadian Forces Headquarters in Ottawa, was awarded the
Patterson Medal for distinguished service to meteorology in Canada.
The Patterson Medal honours a former Director of the Meteorological
Service of Canada and is given for a unique outstanding achievement
or for sustained contributions over several years to any resident of
Canada.
Mr. Kennedy has been actively engaged in the organization of
meteorological support for the Canadian Armed Forces since early in
World War II. During the war years he pioneered meteorological instruction for wartime aircrew, was in charge of the intensive training
program to provide meteorological officers for the British Commonwealth
Air Training Plan and later was engaged in administration of the
Meteorological Offices at the wartime air stations across Canada. Shortly
after the war he was appointed to the position of Meteorological Adviser
at AF HQ and subsequently served as Liaison Meteorologist and as
Meteorological Adviser to the Chairman Chiefs of Staff.
The 25th Anniversary of the formation of the Canadian Branch of
the Royal Meteorological Society was commemorated by the Toronto
Centre of the Society on November 5, 1964, at a 25th Anniversary
Dinner attended by 180 members and guests of the Centre. The speaker
for the occasion was Mr. J. R. H. Noble, recently appointed Director of
the Meteorological Service of Canada, who chose as the title for his
address "Meteorology in Canada: A Look at the Past and Some
Thoughts About the Future".
The Canadian Branch was formed in August, 1939, with a membership of 34 and has since grown to a membership of about 385, with
Centres in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. The origin of the Meteorological Servivce of Canada dates back to the establishment by the
British Army 125 years ago at Fort York of a magnetic and
meteorological observatory. Mr. Noble traced the growth of this observatory to the present Meteorological Service of Canada, one of the
largest in the world. More than 2,200 Canadians now make Meteorology
D. B. ( " D E S " ) KENNEDY,
NEWS
33
their life work and there are perhaps as many as 4,000 more who
contribute on a day-to-day basis.
SOLID STATE AND E L E C T R O N PHYSICS IN THE RADIO AND E L E C T R I C A L
ENGINEERING DIVISION,
N.R.C.
The Solid State Physics Group conducts both theoretical and experimental investigations on the properties of impurities and defects in ionic
solids of very simple structure (the alkali halides) and organic molecular crystals. Experimental techniques used include the measurement
of absorption and emission in the ultraviolet and infrared regions at
temperatures ranging down to 4.2° K, and the measurement of d.c.
conductance and a.c. dielectric constant as functions of frequency
and temperature. Single crystals containing specific impurities are grown
and additional defects are created by gamma-ray bombardment and heat
treatment. Recent experimental work on the alkali halides has been
concerned with the absorption and emission produced by anionic impurities which enter the crystal substitutionally, and with the constitution
of certain positive-hole trapping centres revealed by optical polarization
measurements. In an investigation on molecular crystals double photon
processes have been found to contribute to the fluorescence produced
under very high-intensity visible (laser) radiation.
Theoretical investigations at present under way include a determination of the energy to remove a positive or negative ion from an alkalihalide lattice using an extension of the Mott-Littleton calculation. This
will be applied to potassium bromide in an attempt to explain the results
of conductance measurements made in this laboratory.
The Electron Physics Section is concerned mainly with two fields of
research: (a) Physics of surfaces and (b) quantum electronics. Atomically clean surfaces are prepared using ultra-high vacuum techniques
and the interaction of various particles with these surfaces is studied.
Present investigations include:
( 1 ) Chemical absorption of gases on metal surfaces,
(2) Physical absorption of gases with dielectric surfaces,
(3) Interaction of slow positive ions with metal surfaces, and,
(4) Interaction of electrons with adsorbed layers of gases on metals.
Various techniques have been developed for these studies including
low energy electron diffraction; high-speed, high-sensitivity mass spectrometry and methods for the measurement of extremely low gas
pressures.
The studies of quantum electronics are mainly concerned with the
physics of laser and maser behaviour in solids (principally ruby).
34
PHYSICS IN CANADA
Methods have been developed for giant-pulsing of a ruby laser using
a saturable impurity distributed throughout the ruby.
T . EMBLETON
N E W PHYSICS BUILDINGS
At Carleton University the tender of a new 3J»-million-dollar Physics
Building has been called. The construction starts in January with completion date, hopefully, August 1966. The Departments of Physics of
Carleton and Ottawa Universities received a joint grant of ^-million
dollars last year. A 3 MeV high current positive ion accelerator has
been ordered and will, again hopefully, be in operation some time this
fall. The joint participation has so far been invigorating (without any
hitch or strain).
At the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., a lecture wing has been
completed for the Science Building at the Gordon Head Campus and
is now in use. The wing contains two lecture theatres and eleven classrooms.
T H E AUSTRALIAN PHYSICIST
Readers of Physics in Canada will welcome the appearance of the
first issue of The Australian Physicist, published by the Australian Institute of Physics. It is intended as a medium for exchange of information,
presentation of scientific articles, surveys of recent advances, as well
as other matters of common concern. The first issue appeared in April,
1964 and it will subsequently be published monthly. The Editor is Dr.
J. L. Symonds, c/o A.A.E.C.R.E., Private Mail Bag, Sutherland, N.S.W.
Physics in Canada belatedly sends its congratulations and best wishes.
FIRST AWARD OF THE STEACIE PRIZE
The first Steacie Prize has been awarded to Professor Jan Van Kranendonk, Professor of Physics in the University of Toronto, for his
distinguished theoretical work in molecular and solid state physics.
Professor Van Kranendonk was a student of Professor J. de Boer
and received his doctor's degree from the University of Amsterdam in
1952. Before coming to the University of Toronto in 1958, he was a
research fellow at Harvard and a lecturer at the University of Leiden.
His main research interests are in theories of pressure-induced infrared
spectra of gases, optical spectra of the solid hydrogens and spin-lattice
relaxation effects in ionic and molecular crystals.
The Steacie Prize is financed by the income from the Memorial Fund
which was established by friends of the late President of the National
Research Council of Canada.
NEWS
O P E N I N G OF THE SASKATCHEWAN LINEAR ACCELERATOR
35
LABORATORY
The University of Saskatchewan Linear Accelerator Laboratory was
officially opened on November 6, 1964. The occasion was marked by
the awarding of honorary Doctor of Science degrees to Dr. G. C. Laurence, Chairman, Atomic Energy Control Board; Professor Wolfgang
Panofsky, Director, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; Dr. Denys
Wilkinson, Professor of Experimental Physics, Oxford University; and
Dr. V. V. Vladimirskii, Deputy Director, Institute for Thoretical and
Experimental Physics, Moscow. Over one hundred European, American
and Canadian scientists attended the ceremonies, and sessions of contributed and invited papers were held. This occasion marked the bringing
into operation of a linear electron accelerator with 140 MeV maximum
unloaded energy and a mean current of 200 microamperes at 100 MeV.
The energy can be varied continuously from 5 MeV to its maximum
value. Pulse durations from 5 manoseconds to 1 microsecond are available at a repetition rate of 0-1400 pulses per second. The energy spread
at the output of the accelerator is about 2 % . The director of the
Accelerator Laboratory is Professor L. Katz.
O T T A W A H I G H E N E R G Y PHYSICS SEMINAR, D E C E M B E R ,
1964
Under the joint sponsorship of the High Energy Physics Committee
of the C.A.P., Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, a
Seminar on High Energy Physics was held in Ottawa on December 4
and 5. The program featured two invited papers of wide general interest
by V. L. Fitch of Princeton University on "Recent K2° decay experiments" and W. D. Walker of the University of Wisconsin on "The Experimental Aspects of Bubble Chamber Physics." Unfortunately J. D.
Jackson of the University of Illinois who was to have spoken on "Theoretical Strong Interaction Physics" was unable to reach Ottawa because
of weather conditions in Chicago. At a time when work in experimental
high energy physics is getting under way in several Canadian institutions, the Seminar was designed to serve two aims: first to bring together
those already committed to high energy physics for discussion of the
current progress and future plans of the several groups, and second, to
educate those contemplating work in high energy physics about the
"facts of life" in that field. To this observer the meeting seemed to
achieve some success in both its aims.
The following papers describing the work and plans of Canadian
groups were presented:
J. D. Prentice, University of Toronto,
"The High Energy Physics Program at Toronto";
36
PHYSICS IN CANADA
J. W. Moffat, University of Toronto,
"Theoretical High Energy Physics at Toronto";
D. G. Stairs, McGill University,
Experiments on the Production and Decay of the p Meson";
B. Margolis and D. Robertson, McGill University,
"Anomalous high energy electron scattering";
C. K. Hargrove, N.R.C.,
"Current work in Particle Physics at N.R.C.";
J. Hébert, University of Ottawa,
"Interaction of High Energy Particles with Complex Nuclei";
G. A. Bartholomew, Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories,
"An intense Neutron Generator based on a Proton Accelerator."
After participants had enjoyed the hospitality of the sponsoring Universities at dinner, Friday evening was devoted to a very informal discussion of the future of high energy physics in Canada, ably led by
L. Voyvodic of Argonne National Laboratory. Most of the time was
devoted to the implications of the Chalk River intense Neutron Generator
concept for high energy physics and the Universities. It does not seem
appropriate to try to summarize the discussion here. There was certainly
no general agreement and, since the purpose of the discussion was to
exchange views, none was to be expected.
Between 60 and 100 participants attended the various sessions. We
are most grateful to our American friends for the time they expended
in helping us and to the National Research Council whose financial
support made the meeting possible. Only the future will show what was
achieved.
W . T . SAARP
H I G H SCHOOLS VISIT TO Q U E E N ' S UNIVERSITY
On Saturday, November 14, approximately 600 senior students and
teachers from Ontario and Quebec high schools visited the new physics
building (Stirling Hall) as part of die arrangements during a visit to the
campus at the invitation of the Department of Mathematics. In groups
of appropriate size, the students and teachers heard a talk, illustrated
with a few striking demonstrations, on some aspects of modern physics,
and then were conducted on a one-hour tour of the teaching and research
areas where audio-visual aids in teaching and electrically-operated demonstration experiments were seen. Fifteen faculty members were the
hosts and guides. The visitors received leaflets describing the unusual
features of the building and research in progress, and the C.A.P. booklets "Careers in Physics."
B.W.
SARGENT
Canadian Physicists
D R . ANATOLE B . VOLKOV, recently at
the Weismann Institute, Israel, has joined the staff as Assistant Professor
. . . . D R . R. W. JACKSON and D R . R. K. PATHRIA are Visiting Professors
of Physics . . . . D R . M. A. PRESTON has returned from his sabbatical
year in Copenhagen . . . . DRS. S. H . Vosco and D . W. L . SPRUNG are
on leaves of absence at Westinghouse, Pittsburg, and M.I.T., respectively
. . . . D R . C. C. M C M U L L E N has accepted appointment as Assistant Dean
of Science . . . . DRS. N. M . AHMED, R. C. BARBER, R. A . MOORE, Y.
NOGAMI and W. V. PRESTWICH are Postdoctorate Fellows . . . . During
1964, 5 Ph.D. degrees and 6 M.Sc. degrees were awarded in physics.
D R . S.-H. CHEN has joined the staff at University of Waterloo. D R . H.
K. EASTWOOD is in Ottawa with Northern Electric. D R . G . J . W. G E L DART is at the Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Saclay. D R . R. H. GOODMAN is with the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys. DR. J. R.
HULSTON is at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Lower Hutt, New Zealand . . . . This year, freshman physics is one of the five large classes
being taught via closed circuit T.V. DRS. CAMERON, JOHNS and SUMMERS-GILL are thus T.V. stars now . . . . For many years it has been
possible to obtain an Honours degree in Chemistry and Physics. Starting
in 1965 students will be accepted for graduate work in Chemical Physics
. . . . The Redman Lectures this year were given by D R . HAROLD C.
UREY, Chemistry Professor at Large, University of California. His subject was "The Origin of the Moon and the Solar System."
AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY . . . .
At SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, the following have been appointed to
the staff of the Physics D e p a r t m e n t . . . . D R . J. F. COCHRAN, Department
of Physics, MIT, will be joining SFU as Professor of Physics. Dr.
Cochran is well known for his research in Low Temperature and Solid
State Physics . . . . D R . K. E . RIECKHOFF, IBM Research Centre, San
Jose, has been appointed Associate Professor of Physics. Dr. Rieckhoff
is known for his pioneering work on Brillouin scattered laser light and
on nonlinear optics . . . . D R . K. COLBOW, Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Murray Hill, N.J., is joining the Department as Assistant Professor of
Physics. Dr. Colbow is currently studying electroluminescence in Semiconductors . . . . DR. R. H. ENNS, University of Liverpool, has been
appointed Assistant Professor of Physics. Dr. Enns is currently an NRC
post-doctoral fellow working with Professor Frohlich on non-equilibrium
38
PHYSICS IN CANADA
Statistical Mechanics . . . . DR. R. F. FRINDT, NRC Ottawa is joining
SFU as Assistant Professor of Physics. Dr. Frindt is studying the electrical and optical properties of thin semiconducting layers . . . . DR. R.
R. HAERING, formerly of the University of Waterloo, is Head of the
D e p a r t m e n t . . . . An additional four positions will be filled by September
1965, when SFU will enroll its first graduate and undergraduate students.
Over 100 applications are on hand for these positions.
At CARLETON UNIVERSITY . . . . M R . E . P. HINCKS has been appointed Professor of Physics and Chairman of the Department. He will
keep up his research program in high energy physics jointly with N.R.C.
and the University of Chicago and will continue to lead the N.R.C. part
of that team.
At the UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR . . . . D R . L U C J A N KRAUSE has been
elected to the Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (Great Britain)
. . . . D R . J . R . THYER arrived from Monash University in Melbourne,
Australia, to take up his N.R.C. postdoctorate fellowship. Dr. Thyer
will work in the field of electron spin resonance. M.Sc. degrees in Physics
were awarded at the Fall Convocation to ROBERT ATKINSON, E M I L E
KOTELES a n d RICHARD L U M .
At the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO . . . . D R . B . STOICHEFF formerly at
the National Research Council, has joined the staff as Professor of
Physics. Other new appointments are Associate Professors F. D. MANCHESTER, formerly at the University of Alberta, and J. W. M O F F A T of
R.I.A.S., Baltimore, Md
R. J. BALCOMBE from Dalhousie is
Visiting Assistant Professor for 1964-1965 and J. D. KING now at the
University of Saskatchewan will take up his duties as Assistant Professor
at the beginning of the year. He will be responsible for the organization
of the Physics teaching at Scarborough College which will accept its
first students in 1965-1966.
At DRTE . . . . D R . G . L. GOODWIN arrived at DRTE in January to
spend a sabbatical year on leave from the University of Queensland,
Australia . . . . DR. A. WATANABE rejoined DRTE after receiving his
Ph.D. at the University of Toronto . . . . D R . D . W. R I C E came to DRTE
from the University of Western Ontario, and MR. R. J. FUJAROS from
the Universities of Alberta and Illinois . . . . H. L. WERSTIUK has joined
the Prince Albert Radar Laboratory after graduating from the University
of Alberta . . . . DR. E. L . VOGAN is spending a year at U.W.O. and
D R . RAY MONTALBETTI has returned to the University of Saskatchewan
to help nurse the new linear accelerator . . . . R. K . BROWN has left
DRTE to become Chief of Telecommunications Planning of the Department of Transport in Ottawa.
At the UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO . . . . DR. N. ISENOR is spending
CANADIAN PHYSICISTS
39
eight months as a Research Associate at the University of Rochester
working with Prof. E. Wolf . . . . DR. S. H. CHEN, who recently joined
the Department, has gone to Harwell for nine months to work with Dr.
P. A. Egetstaff on neutron scattering in liquids. (These appointments
are possible since faculty members at the University of Waterloo may
elect to teach any two four-month periods in the year) . . . . DR. S. G.
DAVISON, Ph.D. (Manchester), a Post Doctoral fellow at the University
of Waterloo for the past year will become a Faculty member in the
Department of Physics in September . . . . DR. D. HENDERSON has been
awarded a two-year Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship to do research in the theory of liquids . . . . D R . JOHN W . LEECH, Queen Mary
College, will be a visiting Professor for six months this summer, beginning the end of March . . . . PROF. K. WOOLNER is currently serving as
a member of the Science Study Committee of the Ontario Curriculum
Institute, investigating Science education at the elementary level.
A t t h e UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO . . . .
PROFESSOR R . W .
returned after a leave of absence spent at Stanford University
as Visiting Professor in Aerophysics and Astrophysics . . . . DR. R.
MITALAS has joined the Department as an Assistant Professor. Dr.
Mitalas is a graduate of Toronto and obtained his Ph.D. at Cornell
University . . . . D R . K . NAITO has joined as a Research Associate on
leave of absence from the Meteorological Research Institute, Tokyo.
Dr. Naito is a Micrometeorologist . . . . DR. R. C. MURTY presented a
paper at the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the European Association of
Exploration Geophysicists at Liege in June . . . . DR. G. F. LYON gave a
seminar on Radio-Physics of the Ionosphere at the University of Vermont in September . . . . DRS. FORSYTH, LYON and MOORCROFT attended
the symposium on Radio-Visual Aurora at the University of Saskatchewan in October . . . . Ph.D. degrees were awarded to DELBERT W . RICE
and ROY A. WENTZELL and M.Sc. degrees to FRANK H . PALMER and
Ross M. TURNBULL at the Spring Convocation. D R . RICE is with DRTE,
Shirley Bay, Ottawa, and D R . WENTZELL is at the University College,
London, England. GILBERT E. DARES and MARY F. MURTY were
awarded M.Sc. degrees at the Fall Convocation.
NICHOLLS
John Stuart Foster
JOHN STUART FOSTER, Professor Emeritus of Physics in McGill University since 1960, died as the result of a heart attack September 9,
1964, in Berkeley, California. He and his wife had moved to California
in August 1963.
Born in Clarence, Nova Scotia, in 1890, he attended Pictou Academy
and Acadia University. After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics at Yale in
1924, he came to McGill, where he was successively Assistant Professor
of Physics (1924), Macdonald Professor (1935), Director of the
Radiation Laboratory (1947-60), Chairman, Physics Department
(1952-55), Rutherford Professor of Physics (1955-60), and Macdonald Travelling Fellow (1960-64).
During his 40-year-long association with McGill he held various posts
outside the university and received numerous awards and honours.
These included: Fellow of the International Education Board, Niels
Bohr Institute, Copenhagen ( 1926-27 ) ; Fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada (1929); Sterling Fellow, Yale (1930); Levy Medal of the
Franklin Institute (1930); Visiting Professor, Ohio State University
(1931); Honorary D.Sc., Acadia (1934); Fellow of the Royal Society
of London (1935); Scientific Liaison Officer between the National
Research Council, Ottawa, and the wartime M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory
(1941-44); member of the Council, American Physical Society ( 1941—
44); Tory Medal, Royal Society of Canada (1946); Medal of Freedom
and Bronze Palm of the United States (1947); President of Section III,
Royal Society of Canada (1948-49); Honorary D.Sc., McMaster
(1950); Medal of the Canadian Association of Physicists (1958);
Honorary L.L.D., Dalhousie (1960); Honorary D.Sc., McGill (1960);
Visiting Scientist, M.I.T. (1960-61); Honorary D.Sc., Memorial
(1962).
A bald list of this type indicates that a man has been busy, successful,
and has received recognition from others as a result. It does not
necessarily describe the man himself, nor his reputation among his
fellows. J. S. Foster was the ranking Canadian physicist of his time, and
his scientific reputation was world wide. He had a large range of
interests outside physics. Coupled with this powerful ability, he had a
magnificent sense of humour and a fierce sense of loyalty to his family
and legion of friends. In fact he was a most remarkable man.
J O H N STUART FOSTER
41
From the time he went to Yale, Foster became an experimental
physicist. He had a deft touch with glass, and in the days when glass
apparatus was of prime importance in physics laboratories, he made all
his own experimental equipment. Equally at home with machine tools,
he took great pride in the excellent shop in the Radiation Laboratory.
While at M.I.T. during the last war, he constructed many of the intricate
parts for the rapid scanning antenna which bears his name. Although
he often disclaimed any knowledge of electronics, he plunged into the
subject in characteristic fashion in 1939 by building an IF amplifier
strip for a radar receiver.
To his experimental research, Foster applied a detailed knowledge of
fundamental physics, a broad acquaintance with general science (he
knew a great deal more about other sciences than he cared to admit) and
a powerful, sometimes uncanny intuition. His method of reasoning often
seemed to involve no method whatever; he merely jumped from the
premise to the correct conclusion. In a performance of this type, it was
not clear whether he went through the intermediate steps which a less
gifted person would have to take in order to reach the same end point.
If questioned on the subject, he would make a characteristic oblique
reply, probably accompanied by a large guffaw. He had a phenomenal
memory, which might account to some extent for such intuition. This
memory was not, however, particularly selective: he has been heard to
reel off a telephone number which he had no earthly reason to remember.
One must conclude that his brain was full and that he made very good
use of it.
In his research work, Foster made many notable contributions in
atomic physics, spectroscopy, radar physics, and nuclear physics. While
at Yale, and for the first ten years of his long connection at McGill, he
was mainly engaged in experimental spectroscopic work on the Stark
effect. During his year at Copenhagen he developed a theoretical explanation of these experimental results based on Heisenberg's new
quantum mechanics. For this work he received the Levy Medal in 1930,
and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1935.
From 1935 to 1939, turning to nuclear physics, he devoted considerable time to planning a cyclotron for McGill, while still maintaining a
graduate program in spectroscopy. When funds for the cyclotron were
not available by 1939, he began working on radar with several colleagues
in the Physics Department. After this project was well established—it
flourished as the Hush-Hush Lab until 1944—he departed for the
M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory. While at M.I.T. he returned to McGill
every second Saturday of the academic session to give lectures, simultaneously smuggling bits and pieces of new radar equipment via the
Boston and Maine Railroad. To the Customs men on that line he was
42
PHYSICS IN CANADA
known as the Mad Professor. He remained at M.I.T. until late in 1944,
designing microwave antennas. The culmination of this work was the
Foster conical scanner, for which he later received the Medal of
Freedom award. He always maintained that this antenna developed
because his ignorance of standard radio antenna theory forced him to
fall back on optics.
With a cyclotron in view by 1945, Foster returned to McGill to put
his great energy into the construction of a new Radiation Laboratory. The
original laboratory building was completed in 1947 and the cyclotron
was in operation by June 1949. Foster was director of the laboratory
until he retired, at the age of 70, in 1960. Some 80 graduates received
higher degrees during this period. The students, as well as the cyclotron,
bear the Foster stamp to a large degree. He set the tone of the establishment, and it is fitting that the name was changed recently to Foster
Radiation Laboratory. ("There's one thing wrong with the Radiation
Laboratory," a graduate of some years ago remarked recently ,"It's
such a good place to work you hate to get your thesis finished and
move out.")
After 1960, Foster spent a year at M.I.T. as visiting scientist. He
was to be found in the basement of the old Physics Building there,
doing his own glass blowing and putting apparatus together for spectroscopic work. He missed the Radiation Laboratory, where anyone can
get into the shop, but had succeeded in making some outlandish arrangement with one of the M.I.T. machinists, which involved illegal entry.
When he finally decided to retire officially, Dr. and Mrs. Foster moved
to California and bought a house in Berkeley in 1963. It was natural
that they should settle there, since their sons Curtis and John are living
in the San Francisco area. Both are well known physicists in their own
right. Curtis is Vice-President and Director of Research, Zenith Radio
Corporation, at Menlo Park, while John is Director of the Lawrence
Radiation Laboratory at Livermore.
Foster was not a great lecturer in the formal sense. He has been heard
to say that if a man wanted to do some good research, he should make
up his mind to give some poor lectures. So far as one could see he
rarely prepared his lectures in mathematical physics and quantum mechanics during the late thirties; he had very little interest in teaching the
same subject over and over. Some of these lectures, however, would
become intensely interesting when he talked about building a cyclotron,
the research project uppermost in his mind at the time. As an instructor
he was at his best when communicating something new to a small group
of graduate students. He could transfer his enthusiasm very powerfully
in this fashion, and a long list of brilliant graduates who worked under
43
JOHN STUART FOSTER
his supervision attest to his great ability as a research director. This
same talent often spurred run-of-the-mill students to performances which
probably surprised even themselves.
No description of J. S. Foster would be complete without reference
to his great sense of humour, which perhaps could be described as Mark
Twain with a New England background. He had a curious, seemingly
oblique method of description which—like his intuitive powers in research—sliced through the obvious to expose an oddity. Discussing
problems in geological research he suggested, "When you get stuck, turn
on the water." To a misinformed graduate student in 1945, who proposed storing neutrons in a vacuum container, he said, "Their shirts get
peeled off fairly fast." During a tour of Leningrad, the guide emphasized
the fact that the city's underground system was vastly more efficient than
those in London, Paris or New York. "Seems reasonable," Foster
remarked.
He could also be devastatingly direct. During a cyclotron conference
some years ago, one speaker delivered a dry and doleful description of
the maintenance troubles caused by operating a ceramic rotating condenser in a strong magnetic field. At the end Foster rose to his feet.
"I have a suggestion," he said. "Why don't you take the whole issue
down to the Hudson River and throw it in."
The late Dean David L. Thomson described John Stuart Foster very
aptly at the McGill Fall Convocation in 1960. Presenting him for the
honorary degree, Dean Thomson said :
"Supervisor and friend of a long line of distinguished graduates in
physics, he was Foster-father to them all."
W. M.
Department of Geophysics /
TELFORD
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Applications are invited for the position of GEOPHYSICIST at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, B.C., Canada. Position and salary
dependent upon qualifications and academic experience. At present the
department consists of a full-time faculty of 7 and 19 graduate students
(M.SC. and PH.D. candidates) in the fields of geomagnetism, isotope studies,
and seismology.
For further information, write to Prof. J. A. Jacobs, Head, Department
of Geophysics, at the above address.
Books
The Electron. By R. A. MILLIKAN. University of Toronto Press, 1963. Pp. 268.
$6.00.
and, in Canada, The University of Toronto
Press have re-issued Millikan's classic work The Electron, as it appeared in its
first edition in 1917, prefaced by a 47-page introduction on Millikan—the man
and his work—by the editor. J. W. M. DuMond. Of the later editions of the
1917 book, the second edition (1924) contains few alterations and additions and
none of substantial improvement, while the third edition (1935) with the title
Electrons (+ and —), Protons, Photons, Neutrons, and Cosmic Rays contains
material, especially on cosmic rays, which detracts from the high quality of the
earlier editions. The choice of the first edition for re-issue was therefore wise.
In this book Millikan's beautiful experiments on the electric charges on oil
drops leading to an "atomic" view of electricity and an accurate value of the
electronic charge e, and also on the photoelectric effect verifying Einstein's
equation and leading to an accurate value of the h/e are described in detail and
set in perspective historically. This well written book is indeed a classic.
The publishers are to be congratulated for making this book available again
after many years to the students and teachers of physics who wish to enrich their
education.
Queen's University
B. W. SARGENT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Scientific foundations of vacuum technique. By S.
John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 806. $19.50.
DUSHMAN
and J.
M . LAFFERTY.
second edition of the classic work by the late
Dr. Dushman; the revision was carried out by a group of his colleagues under
the editorship of Dr. Lafferty. About half the book is devoted to vacuum technique
as such, and the discussion of various types of pumps and gauges is most valuable.
The other half considers sorption and reaction phenomena of gases with various
materials, and evaporation rates. The section on oxidation rates has been removed.
Extensive changes have been made throughout, and perhaps the most obvious of
these is the addition of an excellent treatment of methods for producing and
measuring ultrahigh vacua. A good balance has been achieved between the
"scientific foundations" to be expected from the title and the discussion of practical
techniques and actual components. Hundreds of references to the literature are
included. Not only has the book been brought up to date; its balance and general
usefulness have been improved. The book should be available to everyone concerned with producing or using high vacua.
D. M. H.
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