Cavendish's crocodile and dark horse: the lives of Rutherford and Aston in parallel

Ernest Rutherford and Francis Aston were born a world apart but both would become two of the most influential physicists of their time. Their separate training, under the direction of J.J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory, shaped their future and allowed both men to develop and apply their considerable skills in experimental physics. It also catalyzed their careers and ultimately led to each receiving a Nobel Prize. Although they had very different characters, Rutherford and Aston became close colleagues and confidants who spent considerable time together within the confines of the Cavendish Laboratory, at Trinity College, and elsewhere in Cambridge. They also traveled the world in company, usually as part of a group or British delegation of scientists attending conferences and meetings overseas. This article parallels the lives of the two men. It describes how they came to work at the Cavendish, their scientific accomplishments and accolades, and their activities and interactions away from the laboratory.     

Searching for effective and democratic town planning: the international travels of Sir Ernest Simon, 1936–1943

This article examines the international journeys made during 1936–1943 by Sir Ernest Simon, the prominent Manchester reformer and businessman, to investigate urban planning in Moscow, Zurich, Stockholm, and across the United States. The research uses Simon’s own handwritten notes and other archival sources, together with subsequently published material where he drew lessons from these places for Britain. It is a detailed case study of ‘policy tourism’ and ‘cross-national learning’ by an individual important in the town planning movement who was also part of a wider demand for economic and social planning being influentially promoted at the time by cross-party ‘middle opinion’. The visits formed part of his personal search for a form of town planning that was both as effective as that in the Soviet Union but also democratic and consistent with British political values. Switzerland and Sweden were judged as successful democracies, able to plan their most important cities effectively without recourse to totalitarian methods. The United States he approached with suspicions of its tradition of pervasive city corruption. However, he returned heralding the Tennessee Valley Authority and New York City’s express highways and parks as the world’s most outstanding examples of democratic planning.     

Ernest Ropiequet Hilgard: Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

A Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award was given to Ernest Ropienquet Hilgard by the American Psychological Association for his impressive range of experimental and theoretical work on learning, hypnosis, and education. His research on learning has contributed to topics as diverse as eyelid conditioning, motor learning, and the role of understanding in transfer of training. His studies of hypnosis have extended our knowledge, not only of hypnosis itself, but of psychophysics, motivation, and personality. He has been the definitive interpreter of learning theory to a generation of psychologists, and a leader in exploring the relations of the psychology of learning to other fields. His analyses of the relations between psychology and education have contributed importantly to narrowing the gap between the two fields. As researcher, interpreter, and teacher he has been a scholar in the broadest sense. A brief biography is followed by a list of scientific publications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comings and Goings

As a throwback to the idealism of the 1970s, with its contemporary layering of ‘obscure language, extreme ideas and incomprehensible rhetoric’, is EcoRedux helpful to architects? Brian Carter , Professor and Dean at the School of Architecture and Planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo, thinks so. A licensed architect in the UK, who most recently worked in practice with Arup Associates in London before taking up an academic position in North America, Carter regards environmental issues as a single but important aspect of design. He urges architects and architectural educators to make the direct engagement with the difficulties of designing and constructing buildings their priority. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.