Consequential theory in history, where academics forsee what could have happened has become very popular. What if D-Day had failed? What if the Cuban Missile Crisis went disastrously wrong? It is impossible to predict such events but it is interesting what scenarios could have befallen us. It also makes one think what would have happened if certain people had survived, would the world be a better place or worse?
The wasteful expenditure of life is written in poetic prose that encapsulated the horrors and the destitution of youth through the eyes of Rosenberg, Owen and Graves. It is something learnt by all school children in history and continued through life at Armistice Day and on Remembrance Sunday. I wonder whether people now look at town cenotaphs and recognise the dead. For some it is just a plaque scrawled with the names of thousands of men who died in a Foreign Field. When you study the individual names and the real people that died, it highlights their meekness, mercy and honour. It is true that many died in vain but it neglects their own private mortal history.
Commemorated at Helles memorial is a name unfamiliar with most people, but a scientist who made an impact in his short life. Henry Moseley was an English physicist who at the young age of 25 observed and measured through an X-Ray spectra that every element had a different energy signature, all relating to the number of protons within an atom; the atomic number. It was through these experiments that Moseley was able to decipher that at this sub atomic level we could work out the order of the periodic table and importantly, how many elements there were. Unlike atomic mass, atomic numbers are integers i.e. they categorically left no gaps meaning scientists could identify there were only 92 elements. As a scientist, Moseley did not have to enlist but did so through duty. He was tragically killed at Gallipoli in 1915 leading to the government to ratify that scientists would not be allowed to join the frontline. One colleague remarked:
“In view of what he might still have accomplished his death may well have been the most costly death in the war to the whole of mankind.”
Speculation surrounds whether Moseley may have received the Nobel prize for Physics a year later, but the amount he contributed to this world in his short life, like others, exacerbates the great loss to us all.
The wasteful expenditure of life is written in poetic prose that encapsulated the horrors and the destitution of youth through the eyes of Rosenberg, Owen and Graves. It is something learnt by all school children in history and continued through life at Armistice Day and on Remembrance Sunday. I wonder whether people now look at town cenotaphs and recognise the dead. For some it is just a plaque scrawled with the names of thousands of men who died in a Foreign Field. When you study the individual names and the real people that died, it highlights their meekness, mercy and honour. It is true that many died in vain but it neglects their own private mortal history.
Commemorated at Helles memorial is a name unfamiliar with most people, but a scientist who made an impact in his short life. Henry Moseley was an English physicist who at the young age of 25 observed and measured through an X-Ray spectra that every element had a different energy signature, all relating to the number of protons within an atom; the atomic number. It was through these experiments that Moseley was able to decipher that at this sub atomic level we could work out the order of the periodic table and importantly, how many elements there were. Unlike atomic mass, atomic numbers are integers i.e. they categorically left no gaps meaning scientists could identify there were only 92 elements. As a scientist, Moseley did not have to enlist but did so through duty. He was tragically killed at Gallipoli in 1915 leading to the government to ratify that scientists would not be allowed to join the frontline. One colleague remarked:
“In view of what he might still have accomplished his death may well have been the most costly death in the war to the whole of mankind.”
Speculation surrounds whether Moseley may have received the Nobel prize for Physics a year later, but the amount he contributed to this world in his short life, like others, exacerbates the great loss to us all.
A beautiful life. Great recognition.
ReplyDeleteHis father (Henry Nottidge Moseley)and grandfather (Henry Moseley) were also greatly learned and remarkable in their public contribution.
ReplyDeleteWhile Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley left no heirs, hopefully the collective genes still live on to further mankind - Kim McGrath