萬物簡史 第66期:事物的測定(24)

In the course of a long life Cavendish made a stringof signal discoveries—among much else he was thefirst person to isolate hydrogen and the first tocombine hydrogen and oxygen to form water—butalmost nothing he did was entirely divorced fromstrangeness. To the continuing exasperation of hisfellow scientists, he often alluded in published workto the results of contingent experiments that hehad not told anyone about. In his secretiveness hedidn't merely resemble Newton, but activelyexceeded him. His experiments with electricalconductivity were a century ahead of their time, but unfortunately remained undiscovereduntil that century had passed. Indeed the greater part of what he did wasn't known until thelate nineteenth century when the Cambridge physicist James Clerk Maxwell took on the task ofediting Cavendish's papers, by which time credit had nearly always been given to others.

在卡文迪許漫長的一生中，他取得了一系列重大發(fā)現(xiàn)--其中，他是分離氫的第一人，把氫和氧化合成水的第一人--但是，他所做的一切都脫離不了"古怪"兩個(gè)字。他經(jīng)常在出版的作品中提到從沒有告訴過任何人的實(shí)驗(yàn)結(jié)果，這使他的科學(xué)家同行們老是很氣惱。但是，盡管遮遮掩掩，他不光模仿牛頓，而且想要努力超過他。他對導(dǎo)電性能的實(shí)驗(yàn)超前了時(shí)代一個(gè)世紀(jì)，但不幸的是，直到那個(gè)世紀(jì)過去才被人發(fā)現(xiàn)。實(shí)際上，他的大部分成就直到19世紀(jì)末才為人所知。那個(gè)時(shí)候，劍橋大學(xué)物理學(xué)家詹姆斯·克拉克·麥克斯韋承擔(dān)了編輯卡文迪許文獻(xiàn)的任務(wù)。在此之前，發(fā)現(xiàn)雖然是他的，但功勞幾乎總是別人的。

Among much else, and without telling anyone, Cavendish discovered or anticipated the law ofthe conservation of energy, Ohm's law, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, Richter's Law ofReciprocal Proportions, Charles's Law of Gases, and the principles of electrical conductivity.That's just some of it. According to the science historian J. G. Crowther, he also foreshadowed"the work of Kelvin and G. H. Darwin on the effect of tidal friction on slowing the rotation ofthe earth, and Larmor's discovery, published in 1915, on the effect of local atmosphericcooling . . . the work of Pickering on freezing mixtures, and some of the work of Rooseboom onheterogeneous equilibria."

卡文迪許發(fā)現(xiàn)或預(yù)見到了能量守恒定律、歐姆定律、道爾頓的分壓定律、里克特的反比定律、查理的氣體定律以及電傳導(dǎo)定律，但都沒有告訴別人。這只是其中的一部分。據(jù)科學(xué)史家J.G.克勞瑟說，他還預(yù)見了“開爾文和G.H.達(dá)爾文關(guān)于潮汐摩擦對減慢地球自轉(zhuǎn)速度的作用的成果、拉摩爾關(guān)于局部大氣變冷的作用的發(fā)現(xiàn)(發(fā)表于1915年)......皮克林關(guān)于冷凍混合物的成就以及羅斯布姆關(guān)于異質(zhì)平衡的某些成果”。

Finally, he left clues that led directly to the discovery of the group of elements known as thenoble gases, some of which are so elusive that the last of them wasn't found until 1962. Butour interest here is in Cavendish's last known experiment when in the late summer of 1797, atthe age of sixty-seven, he turned his attention to the crates of equipment that had been left tohim—evidently out of simple scientific respect—by John Michell.

最后，他還留下線索，直接導(dǎo)致一組名叫惰性氣體的元素的發(fā)現(xiàn)。其中有幾種是極難獲得的，最后一種直到1962年才被發(fā)現(xiàn)。不過，我們現(xiàn)在的興趣是卡文迪許所做的最后一次著名的試驗(yàn)。1797年夏末，67歲高齡的他把注意力轉(zhuǎn)向約翰·米歇爾顯然只是出于科學(xué)上的敬意留給他的幾箱子設(shè)備。