Re: inertia of 'electron stuff'

[George Spagna <gspagna@rmc.edu>]

At 06:59 PM 8/1/97, Brian Whatcott wrote:
> This evokes a distant memory of the genesis of the Hall discovery.
>
>  If I recall, a research advisor threw out an offhand suggestion
> as to transverse polarisation of current-carriers.
>  Hall picked up and ran with the idea, so that his name is 
> immortalized, much to the consternation of folks in the vicinity...
> (A sort of reverse Jocelyn Bell I suppose, who identified the first
> pulsar as a research student, and whose director all but walked away 
> with the academic prize.)

The "research advisor" in question was Henry Rowland, of Rensselaer and
Johns-Hopkins fame, crafter of superb diffraction gratings.  He claimed to
have suggested the work to Hall, and also to have been unsurprised at the
result.
George Spagna           ******************************************
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