Rutherford on inorganic evolution

The scientific work of Ernest Rutherford is usually considered to have been almost exclusively experiment-driven. Rutherford devoted most of his time and effort to experimental work, and was also extremely cautious in his theorizing, rarely publishing speculations and hardly ever revealing his theoretical commitments explicitly. By focusing attention on his less technical works, aimed at a broader audience, we can, nevertheless, expose such a rare commitment. In these works, Rutherford repeatedly expresses support for the hypothesis that the chemical elements (i.e. the atoms) were formed through an evolutionary process. In that he is seen to continue an older line of speculation and theorizing known as inorganic evolution. A careful reading of his statements on the subject demonstrates that not only was Rutherford committed to the then-speculative idea of inorganic evolution and guided by it, but he also actively developed and modified the idea, putting forth several novel evolutionary models. Rutherford's fabled prediction of the existence of the neutron is best viewed and understood as the culmination of this decades-long theoretical endeavor.