Ernest Rutherford

EARLY LIFE 

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871 on a small farm at Brightwater near Nelson, New Zealand.

His father, James Rutherford, was a farmer, and his mother, Martha Thompson, a schoolteacher.

Ernest studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand.

After gaining his BA, MA and BSc, Rutherford did two years of research at the forefront of electrical technology, during which he invented a new form of radio receiver.

Rutherford aged 21

In 1895 Rutherford was awarded a scholarship to travel to England for postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He originally was overlooked for the scholarship, but the successful candidate fell ill so the award was passed to him.

CAREER

Rutherford worked at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1895-98. During his time there, the New Zealander briefly held the world record for the distance over which wireless waves were detected.

In 1898 Rutherford was appointed Professor of Physics at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

In 1907 Rutherford returned to Britain to take the chair of physics at the Victoria University of Manchester.

Rutherford was knighted in 1914.

During World War I, Rutherford worked on a top secret project to solve the practical problems of submarine detection by sonar.

In 1919 he returned to Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory succeeding J. J. Thomson as the Cavendish professor and Director.

Between 1925 and 1930 Rutherford served as President of the Royal Society.

He was raised to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridge in 1931.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 

Rutherford's work is the basis of all modern understanding of nuclear energy but he used very simple equipment for his experiments.

In 1896 French physicist Henri Becquerel discovered the principle of radioactive decay when he exposed photographic plates to uranium. Hearing of Becquerel's experience with uranium, Ernest Rutherford started to explore its radioactivity during his time at McGill University in Canada.

As a result of his experiments, Rutherford proved that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another. He coined the terms alpha ray and beta ray to describe the two distinct types of radiation on May 8, 1899.

Ernest Rutherford at the McGill University in 1905

In 1908 Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".

Rutherford pioneered modern atomic science. In 1911 the New Zealand physician's famous gold foil experiment, which involved the scattering of alpha particles by a thin foil, revealed that atoms had almost all their mass concentrated in a very small central positively charged nucleus, around which the electrons move.

During World War 1, Rutherford joined the Admiralty Board of Invention and Research and devised ways to detect submarines by deploying underwater signals and microphones.

In 1919, Rutherford made the world's first artificial nuclear reaction by bombarding some nitrogen gas with helium atoms and turning it into a different chemical thereby creating a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles.

Rutherford also discovered (and named) the proton. After returning to Cambridge, he spent several years directing the development of proton accelerators (atom smashers). In 1932 Cockcroft and Walton of Rutherford’s group used the first workable atom smasher to artificially disintegrate lithium into helium.

As late as 1933 Rutherford saw no practical use for nuclear power. He saw no source of power in the transformation of atoms.

PERSONAL LIFE

A tall man, Rutherford was notoriously clumsy.

Ernest Rutherford 

Rutherford’s booming voice was said by colleagues to be three times louder than most.

In 1900, Rutherford returned to Christchurch, so he could marry Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1954 to whom he had become engaged before leaving New Zealand.

They married at St Paul's Anglican Church, Papanui in Christchurch.

Rutherford and Mary had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married British physicist and astronomer Ralph Fowler. Eileen died after the birth of her fourth child.

LAST YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY

Rutherford had a small hernia, which he had neglected to have fixed. It eventually became strangulated, causing him to be violently ill. Four days after an emergency operation in London, the father of nuclear physics died on October 19, 1937 of what physicians termed "intestinal paralysis", at Cambridge.

Rutherford was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton and other illustrious British scientists.

 Statue of a young Ernest Rutherford at his memorial in Brightwater, New Zealand.

Rutherford is a hero in his native New Zealand and his face appears on the country’s $100 note. The Rutherford banknote went into circulation on November 3, 1992.

Both the unit of radioactive disintegration-the "Rutherford" and the chemical element rutherfordium are named after "The Father of the Atom".