Bob Edlin: It’s a pity Nicola Willis did not answer the atom-splitting question....

It’s a pity Nicola Willis did not answer the atom-splitting question – we want to know what reprisals are on the cards

Paddy Gower was charged with interviewing Finance Minister Nicola Willis for RNZ’s Morning Report about her newly acquired responsibilities as Minister for Economic Growth and what she hopes to accomplish.

Yes, the economy would grow this year, she assured him, although unemployment would lag behind this.

But Gower had more on his mind than sorting out whether the PM had neglected economic growth over the past 12 months by putting Economic Development in the hands of Melissa Lee, a minister outside cabinet (and now a former minister outside cabinet).

Before you go, he told Willis after she had discussed her new job and explained how Economic Development had become Economic Growth, he had “a very quick question”:

Who split the atom?

It was an ill-drafted question, of course. Presumably he meant to ask who was FIRST to split the atom and to ascertain whether she knew – as he did – that generally the credit is given to New Zealander Sir Ernest Rutherford.

If she had agreed with him, we may suppose, the next question would be to determine how the Luxon Government would respond to US President Donald Trump’s claiming in his inaugural speech that Americans were the atom-splitting pioneers.

PoO imagines we can rule out sending a gunboat to sail threateningly up the Potomac River, because our capability is highly questionable when it comes to getting naval craft beyond Samoa.

But what about trade sanctions? That’s how we have been punishing the Russians for invading Ukraine.

And would it have been worse if Trump had given Americans the credit for concocting the first pavlova cake?

We were spared the nonsense of Gower further exploring the matter because his question to Willis was followed by a blessed silence. It seems she (prudently) had already hung up.

Never mind.

Later in the programme he had the chance to pursue the matter – and expose his flair for jingoism – with Nelson mayor Nick Smith.

Smith’s reaction to Trump’s claim has become international news.

CBS reported:

A small town mayor in New Zealand has picked a nuclear fight with Donald Trump, after the freshly sworn-in U.S. president heaped praise on American scientists for splitting the atom.

Mr. Trump’s inauguration address rattled off a list of crowning American feats such as ending slavery, launching into space, and the moment they “split the atom.”

The mayor of Nelson in New Zealand’s South Island seized on the subatomic slight, pointing out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by Kiwi-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.

“I was a bit surprised by new President Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans ‘split the atom’ when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford,” Mayor Nick Smith wrote on social media.

Credited with splitting the nucleus of an atom during experiments at the U.K.’s Manchester University in 1917, Rutherford was “the first to artificially induce a nuclear reaction by bombarding nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles,” Smith said.

He added that he would invite the incoming U.S. ambassador to visit the Rutherford memorial in Nelson, population 50,000, “so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate.”

Introducing Smith to RNZ’s Morning Report audience, Gower said mention of splitting the atom had been one of the smaller things in Trump’s inauguration speech, but “quite big for us in New Zealand”.

Really?

We know who really did that, Gower went on…

Sir Ernest had been born and raised in the Nelson area and Nick Smith was willing to say what action he was taking to put the record straight.

Tiresomely, Gower’s first question was to determine if Smith knew who first split the atom.

The mayor earnestly responded that “it was absolutely clear” Rutherford deserves the credit.

Smith proceeded to describe the specific experiment in which the splitting had been done at a university in Manchester.

It was unfortunate and careless for Trump to have said otherwise, Smith said.

So this was fake news? Gower eagerly ventured.

Smith more charitably suggested it was “careless”.

But Gower was on a roll: should the New Zealand government take this up with the White House and get a correction or an acknowledgement that “hey, this was actually our achievement” (overlooking it was done in a British university)?

Smith had the good sense to suggest the government should be focusing on more important matters in our relationship with the USA – such as Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on all imports.

The BBC – in its report – focused on England and headed its report: Trump wrongly claims Manchester’s atom split feat

An accompanying photograph featured Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger who “led the experiments in Manchester”.

Scientists based in Manchester, not the US, made the “key breakthrough” in splitting the atom, despite Donald Trump’s claims in his inaugural speech, says a lecturer at one of the city’s universities.

The 47th US President erroneously listed the feat among his country’s achievements during his address in Washington DC, after he was sworn on Monday.

In fact, the honour belongs to New Zealander Sir Ernest Rutherford, who demonstrated atoms could be split during experiments at Victoria University of Manchester in 1919.

Dr James Sumner, a lecturer on the history of technology at the University of Manchester, suggested the president had confused the discovery with the later creation of the atomic bomb.

“I don’t think he [Trump] knew really what he was talking about,” Dr Sumner said, conceding splitting the atom was a “loose term”.

The BBC report went on to note that atoms split naturally, but in 1919, Rutherford oversaw the first artificially-induced nuclear reaction in human history at the Victoria University of Manchester’s laboratories.

The experiment involved bombarding a thin sheet of gold foil with alpha particles, and earned Rutherford, from Bridgewater on New Zealand’s South Island, the moniker the “father of nuclear physics”.

Dr Sumner said the reaction Rutherford identified might more accurately be described as the process of an atom “absorbing a bit of material and becoming something heavier”.

At the time, a colleague had suggested Rutherford label the process “transmutation”, but the New Zealander rejected the suggestion, as it “sounded like he had discovered the secrets of alchemy”, choosing, instead, the term “disintegration”, Dr Sumner explained.

“If you’re talking splitting in the sense of breaking apart into two equally-sized, or roughly equally-sized, bits, and doing that deliberately, and knowing what was going on, we’ve got to go a bit later for that,” he said.

Rutherford later oversaw a team at Cambridge University which successfully broke atoms into two parts in 1932.

“There are various different developments which are considered to be splitting the atom in different senses,” Dr Sumner said.

“None of them originated in the United States.”

Even so, CBS was not ready to accuse Trump of being careless with the truth or a fibber.

It cautiously headed its report: Trump claims U.S. “split the atom.” New Zealand says that’s not true.

So – CBS would not acknowledge Trump had been wrong. Maybe its fact-checkers were too busy examining the rest of the inaugural speech.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.