Who is Ernest Rutherford?

Ernest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 at Spring Grove, New Zealand. In 1919, he became the first person to transform one element into another. In the experiment, he used alpha radiation to convert nitrogen into oxygen. In the products of the reaction, he observed and brought forth a new particle called proton in 1920. He also named the particle neutron during the Bakerian Lecture of 1920 and the following year, he theorized its existence in association with Niels Bohr. Years later in 1932, the theory was proved right by his associate James Chadwick, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics (1935) for this breakthrough. Apart from Chadwick, he also guided other scientists like Blackett, Cockcroft and Walton to their Nobel Prize win; Nobel laureates like G.P. Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston researched with him for some time.In 1925, he urged the Government of New Zealand to support education and research; this resulted in the formation of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in 1926. Between 1925 and 1930, he was the President of the Royal Society, and later President of the Academic Assistance Council which assisted nearly 1,000 university refugees from Germany.

 

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