Classical-Electromagnetic and Relativistic Approaches to the Problem of Nonintegral Atomic Masses

Abstract

Central to the history of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is its relationship to the ultimate formulation of prerelativistic? classical?electromagnetic theory as most forcefully represented by the electron theory of H. A. Lorentz. The genetic, logical, and competitive relationships between these two approaches to physical theory have been most studied in connection with the problem of the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Both of these theoretical systems, however, had ramifications far beyond the electrodynamics of mov ing bodies. In particular, both provided solutions to the long standing (and in the early twentieth century newly interesting) prob lem of nonintegral atomic weights and masses. This paper will be concerned with the contemporaneous development (through 1915) and subsequent interaction (through 1930) of the two approaches to the problem of nonintegral atomic weights and masses (that is, nu clear mass defects). In section one, the problem of nonintegral atomic weights and masses will be introduced. Section two will trace the development of the classical-electromagnetic concept of electromagnetic mass: its roots in J J. Thomson's seminal paper of 1881, its formulation by Lorentz and others in the years around 1900, and its application to the problem of nonintegral atomic masses by Ernest Rutherford and inde pendently by William Harkins and Ernest Wilson in the years 1914 1915. Section three will be concerned with the relativistic mass