Étienne Samuel Biéler (3 February 1895 – 25 July 1929) was a Swiss-born Canadian physicist who made important advances in the study of the strong interaction that holds the atomic nucleus together.
A graduate of McGill University, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he studied the atomic nucleus under Sir Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick.
Étienne moved to Paris for twelve years with his parents and brothers, Jean, André and Jacques, before the whole family immigrated to Canada in 1908.
[5] A 1921 paper with James Chadwick on The Collisions of Particles with Hydrogen Nuclei,[9] has been hailed by Abraham Pais as "marking the birth of the strong interactions".
By studying the scattering of alpha particles by aluminum and magnesium, he showed that the strong interaction varied with the fourth power of the distance.
[7] This research attracted widespread attention, and the Empire Marketing Board established an Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey to try out various methods of ore detection, with Arthur Broughton Edge as its director.
After negotiations between the Empire Marketing Board and the Australian government, it was agreed that the survey be conducted in Australia rather than Canada or South Africa.