ABSTRACT
Ernest Rutherford suggested that Ernest Walton, whom he considered ‘an original and able man had tackled a very difficult problem with energy and skill’, should abandon his frustrated attempts at producing fast electrons and positive ions by indirect means and team up with Cockcroft in his new undertaking. ‘Real physics’ called for accelerating electrons and looking for electrons and γ-rays produced in their interaction with matter. Merle Tuve was excessively pessimistic; that very summer his group had succeeded in putting 1.4 million volts across a 15-section tube only 7 feet long. To obtain a better assessment of the European competition, in September Tuve dispatched Larry Hafstad abroad, visiting laboratories in Norway, England, and the Continent. In spite of the apparent good will between G. Breit and Tuve, Hafstad and Per F. Dahl, Gregory Breit’s extremely abrasive personality was an ever present factor, ‘one capable of plunging the most abstract discussion of physics into a heated argument,’ according to Louis Brown.
