2026-10-09 rexresearch: Gustave Le Bon, The Evolution of Matter (full text)

URL: https://www.rexresearch.com/lebonmat/lebonmat.htm (saved: research/pages/rexresearch-lebon-evolution-of-matter.html, 870 KB; grepped, not read in full). Searched for: Rutherford (all mentions), "bolder physicists", quinine.

Quotes [web: URL above]: - Le Bon on Rutherford's doubt: "Other and bolder physicists, like Rutherford, after having admitted the principles of intra-atomic energy, remain in doubt. This is what the latter writes in a paper later than his book on radioactivity: 'It would be desirable to see appear some kind of chemical theory to explain the facts, and to enable us to knows whether the energy is borrowed from the atom itself or from external sources' (Archives des Sciences Physiques a Geneve, 1905, p. 53)." Context check (this run): the French original (Archives 1905, p.55 by the scan's running heads) has this sentence, and the following paragraphs argue that the external theory is "strongly" against the evidence. The English version (Popular Science Monthly, May 1905) words it as "Some sort of chemical theory is thus required ... whether the view is taken that the energy is derived from the atom itself or from external sources." See 2026-10-09-archive-org.md and 2026-10-09-wikisource.md. - Gates: "Rutherford also had my results relating to quinine sulfate verified by one of his pupils ... [Ms. Gates: Physical Review xviii, 1904, p. 144]. She came to the conclusion that while Dr Le Bon is right as to the cause of the radiations, they differ from those of the radioactive substances in several particulars." Le Bon then disputes her ultraviolet explanation, citing Phys. Rev. 1906 p.46. - Le Bon on the active deposit: "this plate becomes 10,000 times more active, surface for surface, than the thorium itself" (credited to Rutherford), and then "These facts are not, any more than the preceding ones, explicable by the current theory. If a metal, rendered artificially radioactive, be brought to a white heat, it loses its radioactivity ..." Gates 1903 (UCLA note) is the experiment on that point. - Le Bon's alpha-velocity passage with the footnote quoting Strutt's review of Radio-activity 2nd ed. (Nature, 25 Jan 1906): "Ordinary matter may be emitting as many or more alpha particles than uranium, if only their velocity is less than that minimum velocity which has been found necessary to produce the characteristic phenomenon." - Le Bon's statement that intra-atomic energy is "Useless at present because dissociation of matter cannot be hastened".

Interested party: Le Bon claims priority for the general radioactivity of matter (1897 notes) and for intra-atomic energy; his reading of Rutherford and Gates is his characterization. Bears on: claims 2 and 7; the Morray-TH follow-ups (Moray copied Le Bon).