Henry Moseley, between history and memory
- PDF / 409,487 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 81 Downloads / 197 Views
Henry Moseley, between history and memory Roy MacLeod, Russell G. Egdell, and Elizabeth Bruton (Editors): For science, king and country. The life and legacy of Henry Moseley. London: Uniform, 2018, 316pp, £22.50 PB Bernadette Bensaude‑Vincent1 Published online: 20 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887–1915) is a fascinating figure in the history of modern science. He claims special attention because he started a brilliant and brief research career abruptly interrupted in August 1915, when he was killed during the battle of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles. In less than three years, Moseley published ten important papers, pioneering X-ray spectroscopy and deeply revising the periodic table of chemical elements. He was just 27 when he was nominated for Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry in 1915. Moseley’s profile is highly suitable for heroic narratives celebrating a sacrificed genius, the genre adopted by George Sarton in his article describing a “noble life” with an aura of “romance and mystery” (Sarton 1927). The present volume being the outcome of an exhibition held at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford to commemorate the centenary of Moseley’s death could have cultivated the heroic style suggested by its grandiloquent title “For Science, King & Country”, but this is not the case. Unlike standard biographical narratives, this volume does not aim to provide a single consistent portrait, but instead the different chapters written by museum curators, historians of science and active scientists open up various windows on Moseley’s achievements, generating a critical distance through contextualization. The result is a recollection of Moseley’s life and legacy that inspires more respect than empathy for this brilliant and promising scientist. Moseley appears as an aristocratic figure educated in Great Britain’s most elite institutions: Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. Clare Hopkins’s careful description of his training shows that after he developed skills in natural sciences at Eton, he was disappointed by the traditional style of physics taught at Oxford. He participated in the sessions of the Debating Society, and in 1909 he joined the Officer Training Corps, like 600 other Oxford undergraduates. His confession in a letter to his family suggests a strong sense of duty. “I am an antimilitarist for myself at any rate, by conviction, a soldier by * Bernadette Bensaude‑Vincent bvincent@u‑paris1.fr 1
University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
454
Metascience (2020) 29:453–455
necessity” (36). Other letters reveal that he shared the racist prejudices of his class when he complains about the number of foreign students, “Hindoos, Burmese, Jap, Egyptians and other vile forms of Indian. Their scented dirtiness is not pleasant at close quarters” (53). Above all, Moseley is depicted as being the right person in the right place, at the right time. Neil Todd’s chapter insists on the fertile soil of the Manchester Laboratory of Physics
Data Loading...
