EnvironmentAugust 1, 1932
Atomic Energy—is it Nearer?
Some weeks ago the scientific world was most agreeably surprised when word was flashed across the Atlantic that two young English physicists, Dr. J. D. Cockcroft and Dr. E. T. S. Walton, working in the Cavendish Laboratory of Physics at Cambridge, had split the atom, effected a transmutation of elements and as a by-product had succeeded in releasing some of the higher intra-atomic energy concerning which a great deal has been prophesied during the past three decades. The accompanying article is largely a commentary on that striking bit of news, which may later prove to have contained inestimable significance not alone in pure science but to the world at large. —The Editor