DISCOVERY 



31 



"synthetic gold" is nonsense. It is not nonsense 

 like the popular superstition that Hector Macdonald 

 or Lord Kitchener is still alive, for there is no possi- 

 bility that either of these men is alive, and there is a 

 possibility that gold may some day be made from 

 other materials. But it is nonsense because in fact 

 no one has ever made gold artificially. Men who 

 claim that they have done so have not done so. They 

 have really done nothing but assert that a process, 

 which the careful work of a few brilliant scientists 

 has shown to be possible, is actually an accomplished 

 fact. But there is a difference between a thing that 

 is possible and a thing proved or done, and this differ- 

 ence may be very great. 



The two scientific ideas underlying the process of 

 making gold artificially are these. First, there is 

 evidence in nature, obtained partly from physics and 

 partly from astronomy, that the heavier elements 

 have been, and are being, built up in some way upon 

 lighter ones ; that the elements are not fundamentally 

 different, as was thought thirty years ago, but are 

 merely different aggregations of a very special kind. 

 The second is that the discoveries in radio-activity 

 (1899-1903) revealed the spontaneous transformation 

 of certain heavy elements into lighter ones. Both of 

 these are important and illuminating ideas. The 

 first suggests that elements may be formed by sjm- 

 thesis, i.e. by building up from simpler forms ; the 

 second, by degradation or breaking down from more 

 complex. But these are natural processes, and research 

 into their nature has so recently been begun that we 

 are not yet able to imitate them. How or why they 

 occur is yet a mystery. We know little about them 

 save that they exist. 



■^ ^ '^ :^ Hfi 



Of the two processes, that of disintegration or break- 

 ing down would at first sight appear to be the more 

 hopeful, for it is common experience that to smash 

 to pieces a delicate mechanism is easier than to 

 accomplish successfully the reverse process ; and on 

 pursuing the matter more deeply this view is found 

 to be justified. The building up of elements, which 

 is supposed to be going on in the Universe, cannot 

 be properly studied in a laboratory ; radio-activity 

 can, and so it is that from this science alone the 

 meagre existing evidence concerning transmutation 

 has been obtained. Part of this evidence is nega- 

 tive, part positive. The negative evidence is that 

 high temperatures and great pressures (by which, 

 for example, carbon or graphite may be converted 

 into diamonds), have no effect whatever in trans- 

 forming one element into another ; the positive is 

 that certain of the lighter elements, when bombarded 

 by atoms of helium, shot out at great speeds by pre- 



parations of radium, do break down into simpler 

 forms, one of which is certainly the element hydrogen. 

 The enoiTnous difficulties which this process, the only 

 known method of effecting artificial transmutation, 

 involves, have already been mentioned in an article 

 in this journal.i No more need be said here than 

 two things ; there appears to be little hope that 

 the process can be so extended that common metals 

 like bismuth, lead, or mercury will be transmuted by 

 disintegration into weighable quantities of rarer metals 

 like gold and platinum, and none that this will be 

 effected on a commercial scale. Second, if a new- 

 process be found, or the present one be extended, it 

 will be the work of someone who is " inside " this 

 extremely technical piece of research work ; it will 

 not be accidentally found by an unknown man. 



Contributors to this Number 



LlEUT.-CoL. C. G. Crawley holds the position of Deputy- 

 Inspector of Wireless Telegraphy in the General Post Office, 

 and also that of Secretary of the Technical Commission which 

 is planning the Imperial Chain of Wireless Stations. He 

 entered the service of the Post Office in 1913 after ten years' 

 employment in the Navy as Experimenter, Instructioner, and 

 Fleet Wireless Officer. He returned to the Naval wireless 

 service for the period of the war, when he served as a wire- 

 less officer in tlie Grand Fleet, at the Admiralty, in command 

 of the R.N.V.R. wireless school, and supervised the erection 

 and working of various naval stations abroad. 



Dr. Avlward M. Blackman, after studying Oriental lan- 

 guages at Oxford with high honours, devoted himself to 

 Egyptology. From 1906 to 1912 he was constantly employed 

 on archaeological expeditions in Nubia and Egypt, and, as the 

 result of his researches, has made extensive contributions to 

 the literature of his subject. In 1912 he took on the W'Ork 

 of the Archaeological Survey of the Eg^-pt Exploration 

 Society, in order to publish the very important Old and 

 Middle Kingdom tomb-chapels at Meir, near Asyiit, on which 

 he has so far produced three volumes. He resumed work on 

 the site last year. 



The Rev. Hector Macpherson had a most successful career 

 at Edinburgh University, and at New College, Edinburgh, 

 where he was Waterlock Prizema^n and Cunningham Fellow. 

 He has carried through extensive investigations on the dis- 

 tribution of the stars, and on the moon and planets. He is 

 the author of articles in many scientific journals, and of 

 several volumes, including /! Century's Progress in Astronomy, 

 Through the Depths of Space, and Practical Astronomy. 



Mr. Julian Hu.xley gained a scholarship at Balliol College, 

 Oxford, in 1906, first-class honours in National Science and the 

 Naples scholarship in 1909, a " blue " for the high jump and the 

 Newdigate Prize for English verse. He was appointed a Fellow 

 of New College, and Senior Demonstrator in the Department 

 of Comparative Anatomy, Oxford University, in 1919, and is 

 the autlior of The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, and a 

 well-known contributor to scientific and literary papers. 



Thomas Moult is one of the most versatile of the younger 

 English authors. Snouo over Elden, his first novel, was pub- 

 lished in 1920, Down Here the Hawthorn (poems) in 1921. He 

 is the founder and editor of Voices, a magazine of the arts, 

 now in its fourth year. He has contributed extensively to 

 our leading literary journals. 



Dr. J. Travis Jenkins was appointed Professor of Zoology at 

 Hartley University College, Southampton, in 1903, and Superin- 

 tendent of Fisheries for the Lancashire and Western Sea Fisheries 

 Committee in 1904. He was called to the Bar in 1907. There- 

 after he undertook official investigations of Indian fisheries, 

 resuming his Lancashire appointment in 191 1. He is the 

 author of Sea Fisheries, a textbook of oceanography, and A 

 History of the Whale Fisheries. 



' Discovery, vol. ii, p. 200. 



