ERNEST RUTHERFORD - FATHER OF MODERN NUCLEAR PHYSICS
Ernest Rutherford’s Nobel Prize for chemistry
in 1908 was reported briefly and vaguely in New Zealand.
He had, said one report, “devoted a great amount
of time to the study of radium”.
It was as though both Rutherford – who
had been conducting research at McGill University in
Canada and Manchester University in Britain –
and his work were too remote in the physical and intellectual
sense for ordinary people to even begin to understand.
But by the mid-1920s, when he returned home for a visit,
he was a national hero; everyone knew who he was and
that he had done great work in the field of nuclear
physics, even if they did not fully grasp what it was
Rutherford made three great discoveries. The first,
for which he won the Nobel Prize, was to show that radioactivity
derives from the spontaneous disintegration of atoms.
The second was to establish the model of the atom, so
well recognised today as a nucleus with electrons revolving
around it, like a minute solar system.
Ernest Rutherford with the two scientists who split
the atom in the 1930s, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton.
third great breakthrough came when he succeed in transforming
nitrogen into an isotope of oxygen. The impact of his
research was huge and it was no exaggeration to say
that he was the father of nuclear physics.