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Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of
Nelson, OM,
FRS (30 August
1871–19 October 1937) was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of
nuclear
physics.[1] He
discovered that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a
very small nucleus,[2] and
thereby pioneered the Rutherford model, or planetary, model
of the atom, through his discovery
and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in
1908. He is widely credited as splitting the atom in 1917 and
leading the first experiment to
"split the nucleus" in a controlled manner by two students
under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in
1932.
Early
years
Ernest Rutherford was the son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and
his wife Martha Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England.[3] James
had emigrated from Perth, Scotland, "to raise a little
flax and a lot of children". Ernest was born at Spring Grove (now
Brightwater), near
Nelson, New Zealand. His first name
was mistakenly spelled Earnest when his birth was
registered.[4]
He studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand
where he was president of the debating society,
among other things. After gaining his BA, MA and BSc,
and doing two years of research at the forefront of electrical
technology, in 1895 Rutherford travelled to England for
postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge
(1895–1898),[5] and he
briefly held the world record for the distance over which
electromagnetic waves could be detected.
During the investigation of radioactivity he
coined the terms alpha and beta in 1899 to describe
the two distinct types of radiation emitted by
thorium and uranium. These rays were
differentiated on the basis of penetrating power.
Middle
years
In 1898 Rutherford was appointed to the chair of physics at McGill
University in Montreal, Canada, where he did the work that
gained him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in
1908. In 1900 he gained a DSc from the University of New Zealand, and
from 1900 to 1903 he was joined at McGill by the young Frederick Soddy
(Nobel Prize in Chemistry,
1921) and they collaborated on research into the transmutation of elements.
Rutherford had demonstrated that radioactivity was the
spontaneous disintegration of atoms. He noticed that a sample of radioactive
material invariably took the same amount of time for half the
sample to decay—its "half-life"—and created a practical
application using this constant rate of decay as a clock, which could then be used to help determine
the age of the Earth, which
turned out to be much older than most of the scientists at the time
believed.
In 1900 he married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1945); they had
one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married Ralph
Fowler.
In 1903, Rutherford realized that a type of radiation from radium discovered (but not named)
by French chemist Paul Villard in 1900, must represent
something different from alpha rays and beta rays, due to its very
much greater penetrating power. Rutherford gave this third type of
radiation its name also: the gamma ray.
In 1907 Rutherford took the chair
of physics at the University of Manchester.
There along with Hans
Geiger and Ernest Marsden he carried out the Geiger–Marsden experiment in
1909, which demonstrated the nuclear nature of atoms. It was his
interpretation of this experiment that led him to formulate the Rutherford
model of the atom in 1911 — that a very small positively-charged nucleus was orbited by electrons. In 1919 he
became the first person to transmute one element into
another when he converted nitrogen into oxygen through the nuclear reaction 14N + α →
17O + p. In 1921, while working with Niels Bohr (who
postulated that electrons moved in specific orbits), Rutherford
theorized about the existence of neutrons, which could somehow compensate for
the repelling effect of the positive charges of protons by causing an attractive nuclear force and
thus keeping the nuclei from breaking apart. Rutherford's theory of
neutrons was proved in 1932
by his associate James Chadwick, who in 1935 was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.
Later
years
He was knighted in 1914. In 1916 he was
awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. In 1919 he
returned to the Cavendish as Director. Under him, Nobel Prizes were
awarded to Chadwick for discovering the neutron (in
1932), Cockcroft and Walton for an experiment which was to be
known as splitting the atom using a particle
accelerator, and Appleton for demonstrating the
existence of the ionosphere. He was admitted to the Order of
Merit in 1925 and in 1931 was created Baron Rutherford
of Nelson, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridge, a
title that became extinct upon his unexpected death in hospital
following an operation for an umbilical hernia (1937). Since he was
a peer, British protocol at that time required that he be operated
on by a titled doctor, and the delay cost him his life.[6] He is
interred in Westminster Abbey, alongside J. J. Thomson, and
near Sir Isaac Newton.
Legacy
Rutherford was known as "the crocodile". Engraving by
Eric Gill at the original
Cavendish site in Cambridge.
Rutherford's research, along with that of his protégé Sir Mark Oliphant,
was instrumental in the convening of the Manhattan
Project to develop the first nuclear weapons.
Many items bear Rutherford's name in honour of his life and
work:
- Scientific discoveries
- Institutions
- Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory, a scientific research laboratory near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK.
- Rutherford College, a
school in Auckland, New
Zealand
- Rutherford College, a college
at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK
- the Rutherford Institute for Innovation at the University of Cambridge,
UK
- Rutherford Intermediate School, Wanganui, New Zealand
- Buildings
- Major streets
- Other
- The crater Rutherford on the Moon, and
the crater Rutherford on Mars
- The Rutherford Award at Thomas Carr College for excellence
in VCE Chemistry, Australia
- Image on New Zealand $100 note.
- Rutherford was the subject of a play by Stuart Hoar.
- On the side of the Mond Laboratory on the site of the original
Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge,
there is an engraving in Rutherford's memory in the form of a
crocodile, this being the nickname given to him by its
commissioner, his colleague Peter Kapitza. The
initials of the engraver, Eric Gill, are visible within the mouth.
- The Rutherford Foundation, a charitable trust set up by the Royal Society of New
Zealand to support research in science and technology.[9]
Publications
- Radio-activity (1904), 2nd ed. (1905), ISBN
978-1-60355-058-1
- Radioactive Transformations (1906), ISBN
978-1-60355-054-3
- Radiations from Radioactive Substances (1919)
- The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926)
- The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements
(1933)
- The Newer Alchemy (1937)
See also
References
- ^
"Ernest Rutherford: British
physicist". Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/514229/Ernest-Rutherford-Baron-Rutherford-of-Nelson-of-Cambridge.
- ^
M. S. Longair (2003). Theoretical concepts in
physics: an alternative view of theoretical reasoning in
physics. Cambridge University Press. p. 377–378. ISBN
9780521528788. http://books.google.com/books?id=bA9Lp2GH6OEC&pg=PA377&dq=rutherford+positive+charge+concentrated+nucleus&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=0&ei=fFDNSqPQK6aSkQTMxIDgBw#v=onepage&q=rutherford%20positive%20charge%20concentrated%20nucleus&f=false.
- ^
McLintock, A.H. (18 September 2007). "Rutherford, Sir Ernest
(Baron Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., F.R.S.)". An
Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966 ed.). Te Ara — The
Encyclopedia of New Zealand. ISBN
978-0-478-18451-8. http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/R/RutherfordSirErnestbaronRutherfordOf/RutherfordSirErnestbaronRutherfordOf/en. Retrieved
2008-04-02.
- ^
Campbell, John (22 June 2007). "Rutherford, Ernest
1871-1937". The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.
3 (1996 ed.). New Zealand Ministry for Culture and
Heritage,. ISBN
0-478-18451-4. http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=3R37. Retrieved
2008-04-02.
- ^
Rutherford, Ernest in
Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press,
10 vols, 1922–1958.
- ^
D.A. Ramsay (2001). "Book review of Rutherford, Scientist Supreme by J.
Campbell". ISI Short Book Reviews. International
Statistical Institute. http://isi.cbs.nl/sbr/sbrRev2001.htm#4. Retrieved
2008-04-02.
- ^
Michael Freemantle (2003). "ACS Article on
Rutherfordium". Chemical & Engineering News
(American Chemical Society). http://pubs.acs.org/cen/80th/print/rutherfordium.html. Retrieved
2008-04-02.
- ^
"ErnestRutherford Physics
Building". Virtual McGill. McGill University. 24
January 2000. http://cac.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/Rutherford_Physics.html. Retrieved
2008-04-02.
- ^
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/funding/rutherford/default.aspx
Further
reading
External
links
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Rutherford, Ernst |
| ALTERNATIVE
NAMES |
1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson |
| SHORT
DESCRIPTION |
New Zealander nuclear physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
30 August 1871 CE |
| PLACE OF
BIRTH |
Spring Grove, near Nelson, New Zealand |
| DATE OF DEATH |
19 October 1937 |
| PLACE OF
DEATH |
Cambridge, England |
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