RUTH-LESS

To the editors of the CRIMSON:

In the CRIMSON's story on the restoration of Harvard Hall, reference is made to one of Winthrop's physics students as Benjamin Thompson, "the future Lord Rutherford."

Although Benjamin Thompson, a native of Woburn (who by the way used to walk to Harvard daily with his friend Loammi Baldwin, the discoverer of the Baldwin apple) was long-lived, he did not live into the 20th Century.

Lord Rutherford was the famous physicist who headed the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, where many of the leading physicists of the 20th Century did their work.

Benjamin Thompson, on the other hand, became Lord Rumford (the name was derived from Rumford, N.H., which later became the city of Concord) who did significant work in the field of heat and the caloric theory. This derived from his experiences in the armory of Bavaria where he noted that the boring of cannons in water raised the temperature of the water.

In addition to "his successes in science and love throughout Europe," he also reorganized the state police system in Bavaria and laid out the famed English gardens in Munich.

The Rumford Prize is still given regularly by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a statue of this native son still stands in front of the Woburn City Hall. Martin H. Slobodkin '41