THE NOBEL PRIZES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 45, 18 March 1909, Page 3

THE NOBEL PRIZES.

MRS RUTHERFORD'S ACCOUNT,

The Dominion is permitted to publish tile following extracts from a very interesting letter scut liy Ernest Rutherford's wife to his brother, Mr George Rutherford, of Raglan, ilcriL*ribiug their visit to Sweden and the ceremony of presenting the .Nobel prizes. Mrs Rutherford was a Christcnurch High School girl, and a student of Canterbury College, and she is a lleice of ■Sir Isaac .Newton, the curator of the British Museum. -Htcr dcscrimng their arrival in Stockholm and their meeting there with the Noliel Committee and tile prize-winners, she proceeds to give an account ot the ceremony of presenting the prizes. This began in the afternoon, but the entcr-

taiument in connection with it lasted till nearly midnight, so that it wits a full dress all'air, and the description of the frock chosen for the occasion uy the young New Zealand lady sounds very pretty. It was of soft white ivory satin, trimmed with gold and ivory passementerie, the skirt opening in front over an underskirt of white ninon, and the train falling from the shoulders. Professor liutherford and his wife were by far the youngest members of the party.'

"The Swedish Academy nail is a very line one," writes Mrs Rutherford, "anil tlie stage, upon which was a good orchestra, was decorated with palms, ferns and flowers. Along the front of the audience was a row of gilt armchairs for tlie Royalties. To one side were the four prize men, and slightly behind, but higher, where they could see perfectly, were their wives. Only a privileged number were admitted to this ceremony. At 4 p.m. the Royalties arrived, the King, the Crown Prince and his wife, Prince Wilhclin and his wife (the Tsar's niece), and some others. The ceremony began- with some music, which was also performed between the presentations of the prizes. The head of the Nobel Institute, delivered a long oration in Swedish, and one could tell when he reached the part referring to each man, for he turned to the one he was mentioning, who then rose. Then the orator came down oil' the stage and led him over to the King, who murmured something and presented him with a gold medal and a leather book, beautifully tooled outside and illuminated inside. Ernest's is in turquoise blue with gold tooling, and inside is a long dedication and the cheque or its equivalent. The book, which is about the size of fullsizedi music, is a lovely thing to have. Most of them were different. The medal is not very large. It has Nobel o n one side and a symbolic scene on the other. The Physics prize was presented first, then the Chemistry. They gave Ernest the Chemistry prize because his subject is on the borderland.

" As soon as the prizes were all awa-d----ed, the Royalties departed for the Grand Hotel, where a large banquet was to be held. Of course, the number of guests at this was much less than at the ceremony. We assembled in a big salon, where we were calcli. presented with a programme of the table. After a few minutes someone came up and said 1 was to be taken in by Prince Willielm, the ling's second son.' I was taken into a smaller salon, where all the princes and princesses were, and they came up and talked to us. The Crown Princess came to me and said, 'I think you arc Mrs Rutherford. You look like the English one,' and >*<> vlia'tli'd very pleasantly. She is Princess .Margaret of Connaught, very bright ami pleasant, and very pretty, and she is much loved by everyone in Sweden. Prince Willielm, who is a sailor, is married to a very lively Russian Princess only 1!) years old, and very wealthy. The Crown Prince is a good archaclogist, and excavates in the backwoods, while the King's brother, Prince Eugen, who lives a rather Bohemian life for a prince, is a first-class artist, some very line pictures of his being exhibited in their galleries. "At dinner I found myself seated between Prince Wilhelm and the Crown Prince, the Crown Princess opposite. I felt rather alarmed at my position of loftiness, but soon got over it—-they were so pleasant and such extremely interesting people. By tile way, none of the Royalties take, wine ; tliev drank all the healths in mineral waters. After wo had been dining a little while, the Crown Prince rose and gave the toast of the King in Swedish. After that, at intervals, came the toasts of the prize nven, wlifcli : thcy then answered. Several of the speehes were m German. Ernest's health was proposed by Professor Petersson, who speaks very good English, lie referred to Dil'ton and.Toule.of.Manchester. wliik-li gave Ernest -mnetlii'ng good to answer. Ernest was rather amusing, and they were all very much pleaded with" his speech. He said lie had dealt for a long time in the transformations of varying lengths, but that the quickest he iiad met was his own translormation from a physicist to a chemist. The Royalties all congratulated me on liis I speech. Our banquet began about li.:il). and by 8.80 or !) we got away from the table and went into the big salon, where we moved about ami talked for another i hour and a half, when the Royalties departed, ami we ourselves left about 11. 1 was by that time very tired with standing so long. After dinner the Russian princess talked to me, and I asked her if it took tier long to learn Swedish. She laughed, and said she had learnt it during her year's engagement, but .that any way it was no trouble to Russians to learn a new language, for they already had in their own all the difficult sounds of all other languages. "Next day Ernest gave his lecture, and spent the morning trying to fix up experiments with practically no facilities. The lecture went very well indeed, though f suppose a good many could not quite follow in English. His experiment" also went well, and I think it was a success. To give a lecture is one of the i >nditiims of the prize. Tliat evening tin' prize-winner* d!..ed with the King. No ladies were invited, but the Queen and the princesses were all there, Ernest says they were all pleasant, and that the Queen seemed to know a- good deal about his work. I forgot to say that we lunched that day at the British Embassy. Kir Cecil Spring-Rice, the Minister. is a very cuHured, interesting man ; lie had only liee'i in Sweden a week. The only other visitors were the consul and his'wife, so we had a nice talk. On Sundav we were both asked to go to t'psahi for the day to see the university, but 1 stayed in Stockholm."