How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli

Newsgroups	sci.physics
From	Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com>
Subject	How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli
Date	2015-08-11 20:05 -0500
Message-ID	<pZCdnf6scotbBlfInZ2dnUU7-W-dnZ2d@giganews.com> (permalink)

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How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli
> http://phys.org/news/2015-08-science-lost-greatest-minds-trenches.html

> August 10, 1915. The Gallipoli sun beats down on the back of a
> Turkish sharpshooter. He is patient and used to the discomfort. He
> wipes the sweat from his eyes and peers back down the sight of his
> rifle, sweeping back and forth across the enemy lines. He's hoping to
> spot a target worth taking a shot at as each muzzle flash risks
> giving his position away.

> His sight settles on the shoulder pip of a second lieutenant. The
> target bends down out of sight, then reappears, now with a phone at
> his ear. He stands still as he sends his dispatch. It's an easy shot
> for the sniper. He squeezes the trigger and yet another young man
> dies.

> The Turkish soldier settles down in his hole, pleased with his
> marksmanship. He wonders if he's made a significant difference to the
> war effort (probably not).

> However, he may well have caused the single most costly death of the
> entire war. His victim, now lying in a trench on a peninsula in
> Turkey, is 27-year-old Henry Moseley. The loss to science is
> incalculable.

> Hidden patterns

> Despite his young age, Moseley had already made a stunning
> contribution to chemistry and physics. It is thanks to him that that
> the periodic table looks the way it does today.

> He had graduated from Oxford just five years before his death.
> Immediately after graduating he was employed as a teaching assistant
> by the great physicist Ernest Rutherford in Manchester. Moseley hated
> it, describing his duties as "teaching elements to idiots" and his
> students as "mostly stupid". His real passion was research, so in his
> spare time he used his energies to set up his experiments.

> Moseley was working in an era of physics that was concerned with the
> power of X-rays. The Braggs, a father-son team working in Leeds, were
> developing X-ray crystallography. This allowed science to probe the
> atomic structure of molecules.


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How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-08-11 20:05 -0500
  Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli gilber34 <invalid@invalid.com> - 2015-08-11 22:13 -0500
    Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-12 05:10 +0000
      Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Poutnik <poutnik4nntp@gmail.com> - 2015-08-12 08:45 +0200
        Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-12 21:11 +0000
          Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Poutnik <poutnik4nntp@gmail.com> - 2015-08-13 00:04 +0200
            Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-12 23:19 +0000
              Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Poutnik <poutnik4nntp@gmail.com> - 2015-08-13 01:37 +0200
              Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-12 23:47 +0000
                Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-13 01:11 +0000
                Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-13 02:30 +0000
          Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Poutnik <poutnik4nntp@gmail.com> - 2015-08-13 01:10 +0200
      Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli gilber34 <invalid@invalid.com> - 2015-08-12 12:07 -0500
    Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Double-A <double-a3@hush.com> - 2015-08-12 18:46 -0700
      Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-13 02:32 +0000
        Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Double-A <double-a3@hush.com> - 2015-08-13 13:59 -0700
          Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-13 22:58 +0000
            Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-14 01:13 +0000
              Re: How science lost one of its greatest minds in the trenches of Gallipoli jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-14 01:56 +0000

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