The Peltier Effect and Low-temperature Research

Abstract

I WAS much interested to see Mr. A. A. Campbell Swinton's letter to NATURE of February 24, p. 828, on the above subject. So far as I am aware, the first suggestion to attain low temperatures by means of the Peltier effect was made by me when a student some twenty years ago. If Mr. Campbell Swinton will look up NATURE of August 15, 1901, p. 376, and also the Chemical News, 1901, vol. lxxxiv., p. 73, he will see an article by myself entitled “On a Possible Method of Obtaining the Absolute Zero of Temperature,” in which the method is suggested in detail. There is little doubt that a great field of research would open out once the absolute zero of temperature were obtained, and temperature as a phase vanished from matter.