Melinda Baldwin’s article in the May 2021 issue of Physics Today (page 26) makes a great contribution in demonstrating how Ernest Rutherford used Nature to get timely mention of his work in radioactivity and thus raised the weekly journal’s profile in the new field. But it is disappointing that she refers to older works that introduced or propagated historical errors associated with Rutherford’s early life and work. Such errors may be small, but more than 20 years after the publication of my book Rutherford: Scientist Supreme (1999), which is the only one to study original archives covering his early period, they occasionally make me wonder why I bothered.
Baldwin states that Rutherford “quickly distinguished himself as a talented student with a gift for physics and mathematics.” But the records show that he was a normal kid who took two goes at each of the three scholarships he was awarded—for secondary...
