Ernest Rutherford

1871-1937

 

Ernest Rutherford  was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.  In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".

Rutherford performed his most famous work after he received this prize. In 1911, he postulated that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,[3] 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 is widely credited with first splitting the atom in 1917, and leading the first experiment to "split the nucleus" 932.