Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 13.1 Ernest Rutherford,
Lord Rutherford of Nelson
(1871-1937), a pioneer of the
study of radioactivity, recipient
of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
in 1908. Photograph 1932 on
the occasion of the announce-
ment of the splitting of the
atombyErnestWalton and John
Cockcroft. Courtesy of the
School of Physics, Trinity
College Dublin.
alpha particles were released, and shortly afterwards Rutherford and
another of his assistants Howard T. Barnes (1873-1950) realised that
the amount of heat generated was proportional to the number of alpha-
ray emissions.
Radium was producing heat and energy in the laboratory, and it
was not a quantum leap to realise that radium would also be generat-
ing heat in its natural environment within the Earth. Here was a
source of some, if not all of the Earth's internal heat, and in 1903
John Joly audaciously suggested that this would render William
Thomson's cooling Earth chronology invalid. Gone was the chronolo-
gical impediment to Darwin! Immediately geologists realised the
implications for their science, and Joly was one of the first to carry
