Editorial
I can remember (just) that when I was about 7 or 8 years old it seemed very important to declare my age to the nearest ½ or even ¼ year. Well, that phase passes all too quickly but the instant in time when the Earth has made one complete orbit around the Sun and occupies the same relative position as it did at the starting point, t0, has an importance which is deeply buried within our culture. And further, it seems that the time period of certain multiples of this unit have special significance for us. So when t0 marks a birth then we can celebrate, this year for example, in honour of: Edmund Halley — a period of 350 years, Benjamin Franklin — 300 years, JJ Thomson and Nikola Tesla both 150 years, to mention just a few.
But there are constraints imposed upon these multiples and it would seem from common usage that the anniversary quantum is 25 years if the period is greater than say, 50 years.
So, we may happily add James Clerk Maxwell to our list as this year is the 175th since his birth in Edinburgh on November 13th, 1831. Incidentally, it was in that same year that Michael Faraday carried out his seminal work at the Royal Institution in London, investigating and illuminating the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and producing the first primitive transformer and dynamo thus laying the foundations of the electrical industry.
For JJ Thomson it is also 100 years, this year, since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, ”in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases•. So, arbitrary it may be, but like blue plaques in spatial terms, it serves, quite rightly, to focus attention upon their achievements. And speaking of blue plaques, in 1997, the centenary of his discovery of the electron, a blue plaque was unveiled in Free School Lane, Cambridge. It reads:
”Here in 1897 at the old Cavendish Laboratory J.J. Thomson discovered the electron subsequently recognised as the first fundamental particle of physics and the basis of chemical bonding, electronics and computers•.
So, Happy anniversary!
Malcolm Cooper