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Rutherford: Father of Nuclear Physics

Ernest Rutherford was a pioneering British physicist known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of elements and differentiated alpha and beta radiation. As the first person from New Zealand to win a Nobel Prize, he was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Rutherford performed his most famous work at the University of Manchester, where he proved alpha radiation is helium nuclei and developed the Rutherford model of the atom through his gold foil experiment. He later conducted research that led to the first splitting of the atom and discovery of the proton.

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130 views5 pages

Rutherford: Father of Nuclear Physics

Ernest Rutherford was a pioneering British physicist known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of elements and differentiated alpha and beta radiation. As the first person from New Zealand to win a Nobel Prize, he was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Rutherford performed his most famous work at the University of Manchester, where he proved alpha radiation is helium nuclei and developed the Rutherford model of the atom through his gold foil experiment. He later conducted research that led to the first splitting of the atom and discovery of the proton.

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Valerie Ann Francisco
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Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS[2] HFRSE LLD

(30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born


British physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear
physics.[3] Encyclopædia Britannicaconsiders him to be the greatest
experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867).[3]

In early work, Rutherford discovered the concept of radioactive half-life,


proved that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of one chemical
element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta
radiation.[4] This work was performed at McGill University in Canada. It is the
basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his
investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of
radioactive substances",[5] for which he was the first Canadian and Oceanian
Nobel laureate.

Rutherford moved in 1907 to the Victoria University of


Manchester (today University of Manchester) in the UK, where he and Thomas
Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium nuclei.[6][7] Rutherford
performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate.[5] In 1911,
although he could not prove that it was positive or negative,[8] he theorized
that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,[9] and
thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery
and interpretation of Rutherford scattering by the gold foil
experiment of Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden. He conducted research that
led to the first "splitting" of the atom in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between
nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named)
the proton.[10]

Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of


Cambridge in 1919. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered
by James Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split
the nucleus in a fully controlled manner was performed by students working
under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. After his death in
1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the
United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The
chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in
1997.

The Right Honourable

The Lord Rutherford of Nelson


OM FRS

President of the Royal Society

In office
1925–1930

Preceded by Sir Charles Scott Sherrington


Succeeded by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins

Personal details

Born 30 August 1871


Brightwater, New Zealand

Died 19 October 1937 (aged 66)


Cambridge, England

Citizenship British subject

Nationality New Zealander

Residence New Zealand, United Kingdom

Signature

Alma mater Canterbury College, University


of New Zealand
University of Cambridge

Known for  Discovery


of alpha and beta radioactivity
 Discovery of atomic
nucleus(Rutherford model)
 Rutherford scattering
Rutherford backscattering
spectroscopy
 Discovery of proton
 Rutherford (unit)
 Coining the term
'artificial disintegration'

Awards  Rumford
Medal (1904)
 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry (1908)
 Barnard Medal (1910)
 Elliott Cresson
Medal (1910)
 Matteucci
Medal (1913)
 Copley Medal (1922)
 Franklin Medal (1924)
 Albert Medal (1928)
 Faraday Medal (1930)
 Wilhelm Exner
Medal (1936)
 Faraday Lectureship
Prize (1936)

Scientific career

Fields Physics and Chemistry

Institutions McGill University


University of Manchester
University of Cambridge

Academic Alexander Bickerton


advisors J. J. Thomson[1]

Doctoral  Nazir Ahmed


students  Norman Alexander
 Edward Victor
Appleton
 Robert William Boyle
 James Chadwick
 Rafi Muhammad
Chaudhry
 Norman Feather
Daulat Singh Kothari
 Alexander MacAulay
 Cecil Powell
 Henry DeWolf Smyth
 Ernest Walton
 Evan James Williams
 C. E. Wynn-Williams
 Yulii Borisovich
Khariton

Other notable Edward Andrade


students  Patrick Blackett
 Niels Bohr
 Bertram Boltwood
 Harriet Brooks
 Teddy Bullard
 John Cockcroft
 Charles Galton Darwin
 Charles Drummond
Ellis
 Kazimierz Fajans
 Hans Geiger
 Otto Hahn
 Douglas Hartree
 Pyotr Kapitsa
 George Laurence
 Iven Mackay
 Ernest Marsden
 Mark Oliphant
 Thomas Royds
 Frederick Soddy

Influenced Henry Moseley


Hans Geiger
Albert Beaumont Wood

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