Famous Scientists, Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford was a pioneer of modern atomic physics. He was the author of the nuclear theory of the atom and the first man to split the atom.

Rutherford was born on 30th August 1871 in the South island of New Zealand. His father had flax and saw mills near Nelson. At school he had great success. Then he graduated from Canterbury College, Christ Church, New Zealand. There he won a scholarship to study as a research student at Cambridge University in England. At Cambridge he studied the nature of radioactivity. He continued this at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He worked in Montreal as Professor of Physics at the age of 27. He had earlier married Mary Newton, daughter of his landlady at Christchurch, New Zealand.

While working at McGill University in Montreal, Rutherford investigated the radiations given off by radium and uranium. He identified two kinds of radiations which he named alpha and Beta rays. With Frederick Soddy he created the modern theory of radioactivity and studied the transformations of elements by radioactive decay. For his contributions he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908.

In 1907 Rutherford had turned to England. In Manchester he built up a school of research into fundamental physics—one of best in the world. Here he did his greatest work in physics developing the nuclear theory of the atom.

His concept of the atom cleared up difficult problems faced by the chemists and physicists, who had been puzzled by the nature of atoms. It was on the foundation of this nuclear theory that Neil Bohr, Danish physicist built his model of the atom.

The First World War interrupted all the research of Rutherford. Instead he worked on the methods of anti-submarine warfare. But in 1918 he resumed his research work.

For the first time, he artificially transmitted a few atoms of nitrogen by artificially disrupting their nucleus with radio—active particles from radium and obtained a number of nuclei of hydrogen. His great feat opened up a new science—Nuclear Physics.

In recognition of his merit, Rutherford was appointed in 1919 Director of the World famous Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University to succeed his teacher J.J. Thompson. He dominated the research in Nuclear Physics for several years and took a leading part in all the achievements of the University.

He passed away on 19 October 1937. Born poor, he died a poor man, leaving in his will only $7,000—the exact amount of the Nobel Prize money.