Who was Ernest Rutherford?

Ernest Rutherford was a famous British physicist born in the city of Spring Grove, in Nelson, New Zealand, on August 30, 1871, and known by the scientific community as “the father of nuclear physics”. He is known for having won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on the radioactive decay of elements and on the chemistry of radioactive substances. He is considered by many to be the best experimental physicist since Michael Faraday.

Rutherford received countless awards for his brilliant scientific career, during which he made contributions not only to physics but also to other fields. His discovery of the atomic nucleus and of the proton, his correct hypothesis about the existence of neutrons, and his experiment in which he demonstrated the possibility of carrying out nuclear reactions were just some of his most notorious successes.

Rutherford was a student of JJ Thomson at Cambridge, known for the “raisin pudding” atomic model. He later became a professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he carried out the research that later earned him the Nobel Prize. He later returned to England as Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, eventually succeeding his former mentor, JJ Thomson, as Senior Lecturer in Physics at Cambridge.

During this last stage of his professional life, Rutherford demonstrated that it was possible to artificially induce nuclear reactions, which eventually gave rise to the atomic bomb two years after his death, and, subsequently, to the entire nuclear power industry, of which depends a large part of the electrical energy produced in most developed countries.

Ernest Rutherford Basic Facts

The education of Ernest Rutherford

Rutherford’s education began in public elementary schools in New Zealand; At the age of 16 she entered Nelson Collegiate School and two years later she won a scholarship that allowed her to study at the Christchurch campus of the New Zealand University of Wellington, now called the University of Canterbury. At this university he obtained a double degree in mathematics and physics in 1893, and the following year he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in the same areas.

Thanks to his academic achievements, Rutherford obtained another scholarship that allowed him to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied under JJ Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he perfected his experimental technique. From then on, the father of nuclear physics would follow his career to become a famed professor of physics in Canada and England, and one of the best experimentalists known to physics.

Scientific achievements and discoveries

Ernest Rutherford’s legacy is comparable to those of some of the greatest scientists in history, including Newton, Einstein, Faraday, and Maxwell. Here is just a small selection of his most notable achievements

• He studied and characterized alpha, beta and gamma radiation.
• He discovered the proton and predicted the existence of the neutron, which was later discovered by one of his students, James Chadwick (who also won the Nobel Prize).
• He established together with Frederick Soddy the theory of the nuclear disintegration of radioactivity, characterizing the latter as a process that occurred in the nucleus and not as a molecular chemical reaction.
• He worked with H. Geiger on the invention of the Geiger counter, a device that can detect and count the number of alpha particles emitted by a radioactive sample.
• He discovered radon, the heaviest noble gas of the group, and a radioactive element.
• He worked with Bertram Borden Boltwood of Yale University to categorize radioactive elements into the now well-known radioactive decay series.
• He established the laws governing radioactive decay. This, along with other of the aforementioned contributions to science, earned him nothing more and nothing less than the Nobel Prize in Chemistry due to the important impact that the use of radioisotopes has had on the development and understanding of this branch of science.
• Through the Rutherford-Geiger-Marsden experiment, which consisted of bombarding gold foil with alpha particles, he discovered the atomic nucleus, completely changing our conception of the structure of matter and opening the field of nuclear physics, but also laying the foundations of the atomic model that would later contribute to the development of quantum mechanics, one of the most advanced fields with the greatest future in current science. In fact, Rutherford’s atomic model was the basis on which Niels Bohr later built his own atomic model, which was the first quantum model of matter.

• He named the positive particles found in the nucleus as protons.
• He was the first to artificially induce a nuclear reaction in a stable element (that is, one that is not radioactive), allowing the intentional transmutation of one element into another for the first time in history. This laid the foundations on which the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would be built, decades later, a particle accelerator that represents one of the largest and most powerful machines built by man and that almost a century after his death Rutherford’s continues to answer some of humanity’s biggest questions.

Acknowledgments

Rutherford was a very prolific and highly decorated scientist. Including the Nobel Prize, he received a total of 14 awards of great importance in the scientific and academic world. These were:

• The Rumford Medal and the Royal Society Bakerian Medal in 1904.
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry of 1908.
• The Elliot Cresson Medal and the Bernard Medal for Meritorious Services to Science, both in 1910.
• The Matteucci medal in 1913.
• The Hector Memorial Medal in 1916.
• The Copley medal in 1922.
• The Frankin medal in 1924.
• The Albert medal in 1928.
• The IET Faraday medal in 1930.
• The TK Sidey Medal of the Royal New Zealand Society in 1933.
• The Faraday Lectureship Prize and the Wilhelm Exner Medal, both in 1936.

In addition to these numerous accolades, Rutherford was knighted by the English monarchy in 1914. This is the lowest title in the British Empire’s honors system, but later, in early 1925, he was awarded the Order of Merit, and in In 1931 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson, Cambridge, a title he held until his death.

Rutherford’s death

Ernest Rutherford died as a result of a hernia that was not treated in time. He suffered from it for a long period of time, but, in October 1937, the hernia seized, causing a rapid deterioration in his health that required emergency surgery. He died four days after said surgery, on October 19, 1937, due to intestinal paralysis.

As one of the great scientists of the United Kingdom, Rutherford received one of the highest posthumous honors when he was buried in Westminster Abbey, along with other greats of universal scientific history such as Isaac Newton and Sir William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin. .

References

Badash, L. (2021, October 15). Ernest Rutherford | Accomplishments, Atomic Theory, & Facts . Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernest-Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford-Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1908/rutherford/biographical/

Rutherford’s Nuclear World: The Story of the Discovery of the Nucleus | Sections | American Institute of Physics . (nd). AIP History Programs. https://history.aip.org/exhibits/rutherford/sections/rutherfords-nuclear-family.html