It was as though you could indeed light a candle with a single match, but you still had to look through 300,000 useless pieces of wood before you found a match. The candle would still be impractical. Even with the existence of neutron bombardment, involving low energy and high cross section, Rutherford could, with justice, feel right down to the time of his death that nuclear energy would never be made available for practical use. And yet, among the experiments that Fermi was trying in 1934 was that of sending his neutrons crashing into uranium atoms. Rutherford had no way of telling (and neither had Fermi) that this, finally, was the route to the unimaginable. FOOTNOTES [1]The attempt to work out the structure of the nucleus resulted in a _false_, but useful, theory that persisted throughout the 1920s. The great advances in nuclear science in this decade were made in the light of this false theory and, for the sake of historical accuracy, they are so presented here. The theory now believed correct will be presented shortly, and you will see how matters can be changed from the earlier concept to the later one. Quotation Credit Inside front cover Copyright © by Abelard-Shuman, Ltd., New York. Reprinted by permission from _Inside the Atom_, Isaac Asimov, 1966. Photo Credits Cover Thorne Films Page facing inside The “Horsehead” Nebula in Orion, Hale front cover Observatories. Author’s Photo Jay K. Klein Contents pages Lick Observatory 68 Dr. Erwin W. Mueller, The Pennsylvania State University 70 Yerkes Observatory 86 From _Discovery of the Elements_, Mary E. Weeks, Chemical Education Publishing Company, 1968. 89 The Central Press Photos, Ltd., and Sir John Cockcroft 91 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Livermore Laboratory 93 Samuel A. Goudsmit 96 & 97 Nobel Institute 99 Copyright © 1965 by Barbara Lovett Cline, reprinted from her volume _The Questioners: Physicists and the Quantum Theory_ by permission of Thomas Y. Crowell, Inc., New York. 105 & 106 Nobel Institute 107 Alan W. Richards ★ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1975——640—285/14 A word about ERDA.... The mission of the U. S. Energy Research & Development Administration (ERDA) is to develop all energy sources, to make the Nation basically self-sufficient in energy, and to protect public health and welfare and the environment. ERDA programs are divided into six major categories: