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4/12/99

SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY IS TOPIC OF PRESENTATION AT SLU

CANTON - A controversy between groups of scientists in England and 
Austria during the 1920s - and what effect it had on the scientific 
community - will be examined in this year's Alfred Romer Lecture at 
St. Lawrence University.
	"The Case of the Elusive Particles: Nuclear Disintegration and 
the Cambridge-Vienna Controversy" will be presented by Roger H. Stuewer, 
of the University of Minnesota, on Thursday, April 22, at 8 p.m. in 
Hepburn Auditorium. The event is open to the public, free of charge.
	The Cambridge-Vienna controversy, from 1922 to 1928, centered on 
the disintegration of elements (nuclei) by alpha particles triggering the 
emission of protons. Scientists in Cambridge, England, argued with 
scientists in Vienna, Austria, over questions involving which elements could 
be disintegrated in this way, whether the protons could be observed and how 
the process should be interpreted theoretically. A web of professional and 
institutional rivalries became thoroughly entangled with scientific issues, 
raising the stakes in the outcome of the controversy enormously.
	In the presentation, Stuewer will examine the questions in the 
controversy in the context of 1920s physics, for their meaning in the larger 
context of our understanding of how science functions in an intensely 
competitive atmosphere.
	The Romer Lecture was established to honor Physics Professor Emeritus 
Alfred Romer, who had been associated with St. Lawrence for over 50 years.

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