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The unit that shall not be named

Nature Physics volume 18, page 602 (2022)Cite this article

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Juris Meija takes a look at the tumultuous past of the atomic unit of mass from its beginnings as an idea to its most recent revisions in a hotel bar.

The observation that substances react with each other only in particular proportions led John Dalton to argue in 1803 that this is so because substances are made up of atoms in definite proportions and that different elements have different atomic mass. To put this idea to work, Dalton expressed the atomic masses “in atoms of hydrogen, each of which is denoted by unity”1. This was the unit of mass corresponding to the lightest known atom.

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References

  1. Dalton, J. A New System of Chemical Philosophy Vol. 1 (S. Russell, 1808); https://go.nature.com/3uoqmAb

  2. Maxwell, J. C. in Report of the Fortieth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (J. Murray, 1871); https://go.nature.com/3COXKDH

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  1. National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Juris Meija

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  1. Juris Meija
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Correspondence to Juris Meija.

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Meija, J. The unit that shall not be named. Nat. Phys. 18, 602 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01585-0

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