the rutherford

[FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV]

>Ah Yes Ron, but what was the abbreviation for the Rutherford,
>equaling ten to the sixth disintegrations per second. 

Obviously it's open line Friday and anything goes ;-)

It was abbreviated rd and was proposed by Condon and Curtiss at the
NBS in 1946.

I have heard it said that there was  talk of calling the SI replacement for
the curie the rutherford - after all, Rutherford conceived the idea of
atomic transmutation and came up with the decay equation we all know
and love - but  replacing a unit named after a
Frenchman/Frenchwoman(she lived in France longer than she lived in
Poland)/French couple with a unit named after an Englishman (he lived in
England longer than he lived in New Zealand) was politically incorrect so
they named it after the Frenchman Becquerel.   (whew, all in one
sentence). That's just rumor.

Paul Frame
Professional Training programs
ORAU
framep@orau.gov
www.orau.gov/ptp/ptp.htm
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