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Portrait of Ernest Rutherford

Science · Physics

Ernest Rutherford

1871–1937 · New Zealand-born British

Nuclear physics and radioactivity

Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander often called the father of nuclear physics, classified alpha and beta radiation, showed with Frederick Soddy that radioactivity involves the transmutation of elements, and in 1911 proposed the nuclear model of the atom after the gold foil experiment. He achieved the first artificial transmutation of an element and named the proton. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

How to spot them

  • ▸Gold foil experiment (Geiger and Marsden); the atomic nucleus (1911)
  • ▸'As if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you'
  • ▸Named alpha and beta rays; the concept of half-life; transmutation with Soddy
  • ▸A physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1908)
  • ▸Baron Rutherford of Nelson; element 104, rutherfordium; New Zealand $100 note

Key discoveries & works

Identification and naming of alpha and beta rays (1899)

Distinguished two kinds of uranium radiation by their penetrating power

Theory of radioactive transmutation (with Frederick Soddy) (1902–1903)

At McGill: radioactive decay changes one element into another

Nuclear model of the atom (1911)

Explained the Geiger–Marsden gold foil results: a tiny, dense, positive nucleus

First artificial nuclear transmutation (1917–1919)

Alpha particles bombarding nitrogen knocked out protons, turning nitrogen into oxygen

Naming of the proton and prediction of the neutron (1920)

Proposed a neutral particle in the nucleus, found by his colleague James Chadwick in 1932

Radio-activity (1904)

Early textbook on the subject, written at McGill

Key ideas

  • Most of an atom's mass is concentrated in a tiny positive nucleus surrounded by mostly empty space
  • Radioactive decay proceeds exponentially, characterised by a half-life
  • Radioactivity involves the spontaneous transformation of one element into another

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Brightwater, near Nelson, New Zealand, on 30 August 1871; died in Cambridge on 19 October 1937
  • •Came to the Cavendish Laboratory in 1895 on an 1851 Exhibition scholarship, under J. J. Thomson
  • •Professor at McGill University, Montreal (1898–1907), and Manchester (1907–1919)
  • •Succeeded J. J. Thomson as Cavendish Professor at Cambridge in 1919
  • •Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908 for investigations into the disintegration of the elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances
  • •Knighted 1914; Order of Merit 1925; President of the Royal Society 1925–1930; created Baron Rutherford of Nelson in 1931
  • •Under his direction at the Cavendish, Cockcroft and Walton split the atom with accelerated protons in 1932
  • •Buried in Westminster Abbey
  • •The quip 'All science is either physics or stamp collecting' is attributed to him

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources