No abstract

The early development of medical physics as a separate discipline and profession is briefly reviewed. Although both x rays and radioactivity were discovered by physicists, at first the physical investigations of these phenomena, and their medical applications, proceeded along parallel but independent lines. Radiological journals were founded in Britain, Germany, and the U.S. as early as 1896-1897 but it was not until ten years later that papers on radiation physics began to appear regularly. In 1913 the first full-time physicists were appointed to posts in medical schools and hospitals: William Duane in the U.S. and Sydney Russ in Britain. Thereafter the number of physicists engaged in medical applications increased slowly but steadily, and in the 1920s they began to apply the new science of radiation dosimetry to both x ray and radium therapy. The "Hospital Physicists' Association" was founded in Britain in 1943 with 53 members and the "American Association of Physicists in Medicine" followed in 1958 with 127 charter members.

No abstract

A single page, handwritten document was discovered when the Macdonald Physics building of McGill University in Montreal was gutted in 1978. This proved to be the draft of Ernest Rutherford's curriculum vitae (C.V.) covering the years 1894-1907, probably written in the autumn of 1906 when Rutherford was preparing to leave McGill. The C.V. contains 21 headings in chronological order, referring to research and other activities of Rutherford and his coauthors (especially Soddy and Barnes), plus a further set of headings relating to the associated investigations of Rutherford's team, including Eve and Hahn. A transcript of the document is provided, although in several places, Rutherford's handwriting is difficult to interpret, and the significance of his abbreviations is not always clear. Each of the items in the C.V. is discussed briefly in this review, in the light both of Rutherford's personal career and of the contribution of his team to the development and understanding of radioactivity. This contribution included the cause and nature of radioactivity (with Soddy), energy aspects of radioactive decay (with Barnes), elucidation of the uranium-radium, thorium and actinium series (Godlewski and Hahn), the radioactivity of the earth and atmosphere (Eve), the nature of the gamma rays (Eve) and, perhaps most important of all, the nature and properties of the alpha particle (Rutherford himself). The latter investigations led directly to Rutherford's later work in Manchester, including the nuclear model of the atom and artificial disintegration of the nucleus.

No abstract