1937: The Crocodile Sleeps

October 19, 2019

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 19 October 1937, the death of Ernest Rutherford. The New Zealander who founded nuclear physics, history’s first successful alchemist, the man who split the atom. Like many good Kiwi males he neglected his own health, putting off medical attention about an ongoing intestinal problem until it “unexpectedly” killed him days after his being operated on. ‘Ern’ had a similar life and death, then, to ‘Norm’ Kirk who was also a big kid and died of self-neglect.

“It is curious that two of the greatest men of our day were both boys. Einstein was a merry boy..and Rutherford was a rowdy boy.”- Samuel Alexander

Rutherford’s Last Potato

Rutherford was born into a period of Dignity Culture New Zealand. We had become wiser, learning the hard way from the suffering that the Vogel Gang had been allowed to create and prolong in the Long Depression. Rutherford came of age before Kate Shepherd Victimhood Culture undid that work and turned our brains to mush again. Kiwi kids like Ern were mentored to discover and learn.

Though his own learning and merit, Rutherford earned his way to a place at Canterbury College, the University of Cambridge, McGill University, and the University of Manchester. He rose to the top of his profession in his lifetime and has never been supplanted except perhaps by Albert Einstein.

“The’s the last potato I will ever dig,” he remarked, upon getting his first scholarship that was the passport of climbing the great ladder of his career.

“Rutherford, rather than yet another Kiwi farmer, went on bestride the world of nuclear physics as if it were an opera and he were its top diva. Yes, I do mean he had a temperamental flair but I also mean he was brilliant and incomparable.”- Kiri’s Homecoming; AHNZ

Ern’s mother, Martha, “..ensured the Rutherford children completed their school work with the phrase, “All knowledge is power.”- Information panel at Nelson Founder’s Museum

“I think it matters comparatively little how much a child knows if he has not learnt how to learn more.”- L D Greenwood, Inspector of Nelson Primary Schools 1861; Information panel, Rutherford Memorial at Spring Grove

Primordia Quaerere Rerum- ‘To seek the first principles of things’; Rutherford’s Coat of Arms

The Crocodile

Rutherford was popularly known as the ‘Crocodile’ because, like the animal, he was always going forward. He would think far ahead in grand sweeps then set up experiments to see if the supposed first principles could be sustained. This energetic, curious, ambitious, boyish, approach singled Ern out from the more reserved gents usually doing this sort of work. It led to his triumphs as he boldly drove his students and staff to chase down nature’s secrets.

“…in Russia the crocodile is the symbol of the father of the family and is also regarded with awe and admiration because it has a stiff neck and cannot turn back. It just goes straight forward with gaping jaws- like science, like Rutherford”- Peter Kapitza gave Rutherford this nickname ‘The Crocodile’; Information panel, Rutherford Memorial at Spring Grove

Like any diva bent toward achieving ambitious performances, like Kiri Te Kanawa, I think, Rutherford lost his temper at times. There are stories of him as a lecturer and as experiment leader of being triggered and going into a rage. He resented people and their frailty for holding back the pursuit of physics. Why don’t they just suck it up and get on with it!!!? Rutherford was also recorded, after having come down from fom his ‘beast mode’ crocodile rampage, as making apologies and amends to those concerned.

After The Crocodile went to sleep for the last time there were many great men who stood upon his shoulders. The world was changed forever by the development of his work into nuclear power and atomic bombs. To produce another great man like Rutherford for physics or for any cognitive discipline will require similar Dignity Culture conditions to the ones that made him. I’m expectant of Rutherford’s heir showing up in the 2030s.

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Rutherford’s Coat of Arms and his memorial at Spring Grove, the site where he was born; AHNZ Archives (2019)

Image ref. Young Rutherford; Cox & Whittal; NZ Edge

Image ref. Ernest Rutherford outside Havelock School 1925; Ginny Brownlee, Facebook

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