The Planetary Atom

The Planetary Atom recreates the life and times of an unjustly neglected scientist: George Adolphus Schott. A contemporary of Rutherford and Bohr, Schott worked on a fundamental problem related to the birth of Quantum Mechanics: the Planetary Atom, proposed by Rutherford to account for one of his most famous observations. Schott challenged Rutherford's model and proved mathematically that Rutherford's idea was incompatible with the fundamental properties of physics. Unfortunately, Schott's work was castaside because of the success of Niels Bohr in accounting for the structure of the atom. Much later, it was discovered that Schott identified a crucial point and had, in fact, predicted some significant effects but, nonetheless, his contribution was forgotten and his prediction of synchrotron radiation was attributed to another. In this largely imaginary biography, the author recreates Schott's interactions with eminent scientists of the period, seeking to rehabilitate a criminally forgotten British researcher and restore him to his rightful place as one of the great scientists of his time--