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Perkins: The Structure of the Electron 
time quite evident that the formula, e = hv, and the structure 
of the atom have some intimate relation with each other. It 
seems to me that the only reason that physicists have not long 
ago discovered the exact nature of this relation is that they tried 
to explain one single property of a complex object, the atom, 
before seriously considering how it is put together. The struc- 
ture of the atom was a difficult problem before the discovery of 
electrons, and even yet is not a solved problem ; but the nature of 
the most successful hypotheses on this subject, and some con- 
siderations which will be discussed later in this paper, make it 
seem very probable that the solution could have been entirely 
deduced from the classical electromagnetic theory and the ex- 
perimental evidence available twenty years ago. In speaking 
of the classical theory I refer to the experimentally verified sim- 
ple laws which were developed in the nineteenth century con- 
cerning the properties of electricity. The difficulty was not 
due to lack of evidence or lack of theory ; it was caused by the 
introduction of entirely gratuitous assumptions concerning the 
spacial distribution of electricity in an electron. 
It was well known in 1900 28 that an atom could not be ex- 
plained on the basis of point nuclei and the electromagnetic 
theory. Now why anyone should wish to explain an atom on 
this basis is a mystery, because a point nucleus is impossible 
according to the electromagnetic theory. In spite of the fact 
that the electromagnetic theory was amply justified in every 
detail by years of experimental work, for some reason it has 
not been this theory, but the fixed idea of a point nucleus, 
upheld by absolutely no experimental evidence, that has domi- 
nated practically all attempts to solve the problem of the atom 
in the last twenty years. Sometimes the idea of the point nu- 
cleus has been discarded, but generally with a corresponding 
disregard for the electromagnetic theory. 
Now I am far from claiming that the classical theory is 
infallible, even in its present four-dimensional form, but I can 
see no objection to using it as a working hypothesis until there 
is some reason to doubt its validity. The fact that such arbi- 
trary and apparently impossible assumptions as infinite veloc- 
ity, point nuclei, or Lorentz electrons are incompatible with 
it appears to me to be in no way a reflection on the validity 
of the classical theory. 
28 Larmor, J., Aether and Matter. Cambridge University Press (1900). 
