Sir Ernest Rutherford

Who is Sir Ernest Rutherford?

Ernest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 near Brightwater, in the Nelson region of New Zealand, the son of a farmer and flax-miller. After studying at Canterbury College he won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory. He identified and named alpha and beta radiation, formulated the concept of the radioactive half-life, and showed that radioactivity involves the transmutation of one element into another—work for which he received the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1911, interpreting the famous gold-foil scattering experiment, he proposed the nuclear model of the atom, with a tiny dense positively charged nucleus. In 1917 he became the first person to deliberately split the atom, transmuting nitrogen into oxygen. Widely regarded as the father of nuclear physics, he was made Baron Rutherford of Nelson; the element rutherfordium is named in his honour. He appears on the New Zealand hundred-dollar note.

Sources: Nobel Foundation, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908 citation · David Wilson, 'Rutherford: Simple Genius' (1983) · John Campbell, 'Rutherford: Scientist Supreme' (1999)