One Lone Australian - Or How I Won The War

Is this your way of trying to reclaim some national pride after the Ashes Dean?

Funny Matt.  Right on.

I thought it was the guy who invented the 'cyclotron'  http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllawrence.htm 

And the Manhattan Project didn't provide a clue:

http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/atomic_bomb.htm 

So a bit or research revealed that you must mean Samuel T. Cohen - inventor of the neutron bomb.  A challenging find. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/us/02cohen.html 

btw - If you want a list of Oz inventors, some more worthy than others, then look here: http://www.whitehat.com.au/australia/Inventions/InventionsA.html 

My favourite is Dr. John O'Sullivan who invented the modern WiFi system.  Frying our gray matter like the neutron bomb, but more slowly.

Matt and John what else do we have left now except past glories?

The Answer is

Sir Mark Oliphant....... from wikipedia

Well worth a read. A great debt is owed there.

Never underestimate the Australians, we don't only play cricket.

Winners were @marketmentat and @chris_skinner  Bravo

An interview with Sir Mark in 1996

Ah.

Yes that interview is fascinating. Very frank. Often tangential and a little jarring. All those pioneers of the 40s-50s seemed to have a different pace of life and set of goals. Measured in decades and plaudits where now we aspire to years and dollars.

I never realised Rutherford was a New Zealander either!

Many may be tempted to think poorly of the early physicists. When you put it into perspective, uranium something that appeared fairly benign and only reacted when enough of the deadly stuff was brought together. When enough was combined they got the biggest bang, even beyond what was really imaginable, even if one was able to understand the mathmeticians calculations. Who would have initially thought that once dispersed or separated again that radioactive material would have such devastating consequences?

Young people simply do not understand the pace and minds of the early 20th century physicists. Communication of ideas to fruition took logarithmically longer than today. Decades. Some events were driven by wars, if only because thta was the only way to rally sufficient resources to turn the theoretical into experimental.

Today simply make a sensible suggestion to 'make it so'. Often within minutes. Request almost any information and you just might have it in seconds even without google. Knowledge is - after all - just about knowing who to ask.

Dean,

Here's another for you.  'Dr' Lionel Logue, the speech therapist to King George VI in the 2nd World War.

Go and see the film - 'The King's Speech' - brilliant (if it's released in Oz).  No hollywood car chases and explosions, or CGI effects (well OK there are some to provide the period backdrops).  Logue even played by a real Aussie, Geoffrey Rush, although his accent was pretty mild.

It/he will win an Oscar for sure.

-jd

A  little example of how radiation wasn't really thought to be dangerous. It gives some context to Oliphant's peers. This will shock you, in a funny way.

When radioactive was in vogue