NEW LINE OF RESEARCH

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 75, 30 March 1933, Page 19

NEW LINE OF RESEARCH

INTENSE MAGNETIC FIELDS

There was a distinguished1 gathering of scientists at tho:openiug,last month, of tho new lioyal Society Moiid Laboratory at Cambridge. This laboratory, which has been described in "The Post," is intended for special research in the effects of very intense magnetic fields—work which requires apparatus of a kind never before used. Tlie instantaneous: release of enormous power, almost in- the nature qf an , electromechanical explosion, is in striking contrast to much, of the epoch-making work that has been done at the Cavendish Laboratory, of which the new laboratory is an extension-. Lord Kutherford, one of the'world's leading investigators .of atomic structure, is strongly supporting Professor Kapitza in the new line of research.

Mr. Stanley Baldwin, who opened the Mond Laboratory,, roferred to the discovery of the electron by Sir J. J. Thomson.

'.'This has not only revolutionised .pur1; knowledge 'of the constitution of matter,"he said, "but lias had niaWy industrial applications' of the flrs:t''im!portance. The possibility of radio communication throughout tho world,! and the triumph of broadcasting have been largely dependent on this fundamental discovery;".'. Ho detailed how in that, laboratory discoveries had been made with the electron and the proton, and said that in tho last year still further striking advances had boen made by the discovery ot" tho neutron and the recognition of . its remarkable properties. -.; .. . ■'■'~,' ,

There had also been the discovery of new and successful methods of attack on the age-old problem of tho transmutation; of matterf .The new departmeut was a striking example of the cooperation of ..a 'number of scienti.Cc bodies, to a .common end. ;.

Mr. BaldwinIrecalled the days when tho liquid air and liquid hydrogen experiments were being carried 611 in tho Royal Inatitute, and .this: country was the loader in low.temperature iiivestiga-' tions. Since that time '-a..-number of special, laboratories had "sprung up throughout the world, the best known being at Leydcn, while there was another' at • Toronto University, and a third in Berlin;

~ ''It. is. a. llal'py augury," lie said, that with the provision of this now laboratory, this country will again, after-many years, be in a position to take its-part .m this important field of investigation in which it was at one time pre-eminent."

Lord Rutherford remarked that a site which previously was "like a shell hole in France" had been converted tnto.,that. fine laboratory. Science was always striving to increase the magnitude of .the forces with which to torture matter. • ' .