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Thy sics 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, No . 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

THE ORIGIN OF T H E SOLAR S Y S T E M by G. M. Griffiths 6

T H E BIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH I, by R. W. Jackson 17

C . A . P . AFFAIRS 3 0

N E W S 3 2

CANADIAN PHYSICISTS 3 7

J O H N S T U A R T F O S T E R 4 0

BOOKS 4 4

EDITOR: 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.

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 Educa-tional 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 member-ship 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 mem-bership from physicists, scientists and engineers whose work is related to physics, from teachers of physics and from university students study-ing 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 organiz-ing 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. Arrange-ments 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 mem-ber, 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.

C.A.P. EXECUTIVE. 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 Uni-versity. 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.

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. Observa-tions 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 momen-tum 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, how-ever, 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 com-parable 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 observa-tion 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 mecha-nism 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 con-cluding 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%


of the mass to energy which reduces the possible age to about 1011 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 con-ditions. 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

1 0 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, pro-duced 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 1 1

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 pre-sumably 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 presum-ably 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 par-ticles 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 astro-nomer, 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


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 sug-gests 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 pro-cesses 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 re-mains 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 1 3

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 pres-ent 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 tempera-ture was too high in the region of the earth for condensation of sig-nificant 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


at the abundances of the light nuclei he would not be happy with the above explanation. He knows spallation reactions produce approxi-mately 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 B11. How-ever, 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 Li6(n, a ) T and B10(n, a)Li7 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 B10 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 B10 depleting them and producing extra Li7 from the B10. 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 Gd187 on the earth. Since this has the huge


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 specula-tion 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


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 radio-activities 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 establish-ment 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 un-paralleled 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 1 9

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


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 sophisti-cated technology in the U.S. was and is based on Government expendi-ture 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 ulti-mate 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 con-stitute 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 com-plex? 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


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 fore-shadowed 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 des-cribed 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 work-ings, 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 im-portant. 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 mis-interpreted. 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


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 tech-nicians. 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 labora-tory 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 metal-lurgist, 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 proba-bilities of pay-off reasonable, and the research must be supported by an adequate development organization. The cost of development—tying


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 semi-conductor physics should be not less than 15 or 20 full-time profes-sionals, 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 re-search 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 post-doctoral 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 economic-ally 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 govern-ment 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 '67 '68

CANADA'S R & 0 COMPONENT RELATIVE TO THE U.S. ANO U.K.

FIGURE 1


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 develop-ment 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 any-thing 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


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 advan-tage 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 inter-actions 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 re-search 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


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 tempera-ture 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 tempera-ture, 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 Econ-omic 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.

Thursday, June 10 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. 9:00 a.m.

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2:00 p.m. 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.

Registration Meeting of Executive and Council Joint symposium with the Royal Society of Canada on Radio Astronomy

Registration Earth Sciences Division symposium on Iso-tope Geophysics Nuclear and High Energy Physics: sym-posium on Polarized Beams and Targets General sessions Earth Sciences Division symposium on Crustal Structures in Canada Invited and contributed papers on Radio Astronomy Theoretical Physics Division symposium General sessions

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 3 1

(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 hous-ing 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 qualifica-tions 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

D. B. ( " D E S " ) KENNEDY, 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 in-struction 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 member-ship of 34 and has since grown to a membership of about 385, with Centres in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. The origin of the Meteoro-logical 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 ob-servatory to the present Meteorological Service of Canada, one of the largest in the world. More than 2,200 Canadians now make Meteorology

NEWS 3 3

their life work and there are perhaps as many as 4,000 more who contribute on a day-to-day basis.

SOLID STATE AND ELECTRON PHYSICS IN THE RADIO AND ELECTRICAL

ENGINEERING DIVISION, N . R . C .

The Solid State Physics Group conducts both theoretical and experi-mental investigations on the properties of impurities and defects in ionic solids of very simple structure (the alkali halides) and organic mole-cular 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 im-purities 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 determina-tion of the energy to remove a positive or negative ion from an alkali-halide 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. Atomi-cally 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 spec-trometry 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).


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 com-pletion 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 class-rooms.

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 Insti-tute 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 Kra-nendonk, 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 3 5

O P E N I N G OF THE SASKATCHEWAN LINEAR ACCELERATOR 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. Lau-rence, 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 contri-buted 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 avail-able 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.

OTTAWA H I G H ENERGY PHYSICS SEMINAR, D E C E M B E R , 1 9 6 4

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 experi-ments" and W. D. Walker of the University of Wisconsin on "The Ex-perimental Aspects of Bubble Chamber Physics." Unfortunately J. D. Jackson of the University of Illinois who was to have spoken on "Theo-retical 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 institu-tions, 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";


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 Uni-versities at dinner, Friday evening was devoted to a very informal dis-cussion 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

HIGH 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 de-monstration 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. book-lets "Careers in Physics."

B . W . SARGENT

Canadian Physicists

AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY . . . . DR. ANATOLE B . VOLKOV, recently at the Weismann Institute, Israel, has joined the staff as Assistant Professor . . . . DR. R. W. JACKSON and DR. R. K. PATHRIA are Visiting Professors of Physics . . . . DR. 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 . . . . DR. 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. DR. S.-H. CHEN has joined the staff at University of Waterloo. DR. H. K. EASTWOOD is in Ottawa with Northern Electric. DR. G . J . W. G E L -DART is at the Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Saclay. DR. R. H. GOOD-MAN is with the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys. DR. J. R. HULSTON is at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Lower Hutt, New Zea-land . . . . This year, freshman physics is one of the five large classes being taught via closed circuit T.V. DRS. CAMERON, JOHNS and SUM-MERS-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 DR. HAROLD C. UREY, Chemistry Professor at Large, University of California. His sub-ject was "The Origin of the Moon and the Solar System."

At SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, the following have been appointed to the staff of the Physics Depar tment . . . . DR. 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 . . . . DR. 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 . . . . DR. 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 Semi-conductors . . . . 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


Statistical Mechanics . . . . DR. R. F. FRINDT, NRC Ottawa is joining SFU as Assistant Professor of Physics. Dr. Frindt is studying the elec-trical 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 ap-pointed 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 . . . . DR. LUCJAN 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, EMILE KOTELES a n d RICHARD L U M .

At the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO . . . . DR. B . STOICHEFF formerly at the National Research Council, has joined the staff as Professor of Physics. Other new appointments are Associate Professors F. D. MAN-CHESTER, formerly at the University of Alberta, and J. W. MOFFAT 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. RICE 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 DR. 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 De-partment of Transport in Ottawa.

At the UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO . . . . DR. N. ISENOR is spending

CANADIAN PHYSICISTS 3 9

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 re-search in the theory of liquids . . . . D R . JOHN W . LEECH, Queen Mary College, will be a visiting Professor for six months this summer, begin-ning 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 . NICHOLLS 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 . . . . DR. 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 Ver-mont in September . . . . DRS. FORSYTH, LYON and MOORCROFT attended the symposium on Radio-Visual Aurora at the University of Saskatche-wan 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. DR. RICE is with DRTE, Shirley Bay, Ottawa, and DR. WENTZELL is at the University College, London, England. GILBERT E. DARES and MARY F. MURTY were awarded M.Sc. degrees at the Fall Convocation.

John Stuart Foster

JOHN STUART FOSTER, Professor Emeritus of Physics in McGill Uni-versity 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 Mac-donald 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.

JOHN STUART FOSTER 4 1

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 ex-planation 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 consider-able 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, simul-taneously smuggling bits and pieces of new radar equipment via the Boston and Maine Railroad. To the Customs men on that line he was


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 establish-ment, 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 spectro-scopic work. He missed the Radiation Laboratory, where anyone can get into the shop, but had succeeded in making some outlandish arrange-ment 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 mech-anics 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

JOHN STUART FOSTER 43

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 re-search—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 pro-posed 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 con-denser 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 . TELFORD

Department of Geophysics / UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Applications are invited for the position of GEOPHYSICIST at the Uni-versity 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.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 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

Scientific foundations of vacuum technique. By S. DUSHMAN and J. M . LAFFERTY. John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 806. $19.50.

THIS IS A THOROUGHLY REVISED 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 con-cerned with producing or using high vacua.

D. M. H.

CANADIAN OPPORTUNITY

for

SOLID-STATE RESEARCH

CTS of Canada invites inquiries, in strict confidence, from solid-state physicists, chemists, and electronic engineers who wish to conduct basic research in semiconductor and thin film physics or who wish to engage in the development of devices, miniature circuit components, semiconductor and electro-optical devices.

This is an unusual opportunity to join a newly organized Research Laboratory and to conduct your own research or development program in a stimulating scientific envir-onment in which excellent support is provided, both in facilities and in technical personnel.

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Veeco's reputat ion for qual i ty products o f ten sets the standards for comparison in vacuum instruments and equ ipment . Such comparisons, though f lat ter ing, usually omi t many impor tant features wh ich users need when evaluat ing overal l performance.

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Several desirable features of the GA-4 de fy comparison. To get details about single peak moni tor ing, fast and s low scans w i t h scope-recorder readout, and the various modules avai lable, w r i t e for bul le t in RA-2, or contact your nearest Veeco Field Office.

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