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| Ernest Rutherford |
Ernest
Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871 in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child
and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James
Rutherford, a Scottish wheelwright, emigrated to New Zealand with Ernest's
grandfather and the rest of the family in 1842. His mother, née Martha Thompson,
was an English teacher, who with her widowed mother, also went to live there in
1855.
Ernest
received his early education in the public schools and at the age of 16 entered
Nelson Collegiate School. In 1889 he was awarded a University scholarship and
he proceeded to the University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he entered
Canterbury College. He graduated MA in 1893 with a double first in Mathematics
and Physical Sciences, and he went on to study at the College for a short time,
receiving a B.Sc. degree the following year. In the same year, 1894, he was
awarded the 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship, enabling him to go to Trinity
College, Cambridge, as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under JJThomson. In 1897 he was
awarded a BA Student Research and Coutts-Trotter Trinity College. The
opportunity came when the Macdonald Chair of Physics at McGill University,
Montreal, became vacant and in 1898 he went to Canada to take up the post.
Rutherford
returned to England in 1907 become Langworthy Professor of Physics at the
University of Manchester, succeeding Sir Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he
accepted an invitation to succeed Sir Joseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor
of Physics at Cambridge. He also became Chairman of the Advisory Council, HM
Government, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; Professor of
Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London, and Director of the Royal
Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge.
The
first study Rutherford, in New Zealand, which is related to the magnetic
properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations, and his thesis
entitled Magnetization of Iron by High-Frequency Discharge. He was one of the
first to design highly original experiments with high frequency, alternating
current. The second paper, Magnetic Viscosity, was published in the
Transactions of the New Zealand Institute (1896) and contains a description of
the apparatus is able to measure the time-interval one hundred-thousandth of a
second.
On
arrival at Cambridge his talents quickly recognized by Professor Thomson.
During his first spell at the Cavendish Laboratory, he invented a detector for
electromagnetic waves, an important feature into ingenious magnetizing coil
containing tiny bundles of magnetic iron wire. He worked jointly with Thomson
on the behavior of ions observed in the gas that has been treated with X-rays,
and also, in 1897, in conjunction with the mobility of ions in an electric
field strength, and on related topics such as the photoelectric effect. In 1898
he reported the existence of alpha and beta rays in uranium radiation and indicated
some of their properties.
In
Montreal, there are many opportunities for research at McGill, and his work on
radioactive bodies, particularly the emission of alpha rays, was continued in
the Macdonald Laboratory. With RB Owens he studied the "emanation" of
thorium and discovered a new noble gas, a radioactive isotope, which became
known as thoron. Frederick Soddy arrived at McGill in 1900 from Oxford, and he
collaborated with Rutherford in creating the "disintegration theory"
of radioactivity which regards radioactive phenomena as atomic - the process -
not molecular. . This theory is supported by a large number of experimental
evidence, a number of new radioactive substances were found and their position
in the series of transformations has been established Otto Hahn, who later
discovered atomic fission, worked under Rutherford at the Montreal Laboratory
in 1905-06.
At
Manchester, Rutherford continued his research on the properties of radium
emanation and alpha rays and, in conjunction with H. Geiger, a method for
detecting a single alpha particle and counting the number emitted from radium
was devised. In 1910, investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and the
nature of the structure of the atom which caused such scattering led to the
postulation of the concept of "core", the largest contributions to
physics. According to him practically the atomic mass and at the same time all
positive charge of the atom is concentrated around the center of the room
minutes. In 1912 Niels Bohr joined him in Manchester and he adapted Rutherford's nuclear
structure to Max Planck's quantum theory's and obtained a theory of atomic
structure which, with later improvements, mainly as a result of Heisenberg's
concepts, remains valid to this day. In 1913, together with HG Moseley, he used
cathode rays to bombard atoms of various elements and demonstrate that the
structures in dealing with extremist groups that characterize the elements.
Each element can then be assigned an atomic number and, more importantly, the
nature of each element can be defined by this number. In 1919, during the last
year in Manchester, he found that the nuclei of certain light elements, such as
nitrogen, can be "destroyed" by the impact of energetic alpha
particles coming from some radioactive source, and that during this process
fast protons were emitted. Blackett later proved, with a cloud, that the
nitrogen in this process actually turned into an oxygen isotope, so that
Rutherford was the first to deliberately change one element into another. G.de
Hevesy was also one of the collaborators Rutherford at Manchester.
An
inspirational leader of the Cavendish Laboratory, he directed many future Nobel
Prize winners on their great achievements: Chadwick, Blackett, Cockcroft and
Walton, while the other Nobel who worked with him at the Cavendish for shorter
times or more: GP Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston. CD Ellis, a co-author
in 1919 and 1930 showed "that the majority of the experiments at the
Cavendish really started by Rutherford advice directly or indirectly". He
remained active and worked until the end of his life.
Rutherford
published several books: Radioactivity (1904); Radioactive Transformations
(1906), became Silliman Lectures at Yale University, Radiation from Radioactive
Substances, with James Chadwick and CD Ellis (1919, 1930) - a thoroughly
documented book which serves as a chronological list of many papers to learned
societies, etc; Electrical Structure of Matter (1926); The Artificial
Transmutation of the Elements (1933); The New Alchemy (1937).
Rutherford
was knighted in 1914, he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1925, and in
1931 he was created First Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand, and
Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903 and President
from 1925 to 1930. Among many honors, he was awarded the Rumford Medal (1905)
and Copley Medal (1922) from the Royal Society, Bressa Prize (1910) of the
Academy of Sciences in Turin, Albert Medal (1928) from the Royal Society of
Art, the Faraday Medal (1930) of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the
D.Sc. degree of the University of New Zealand, and an honorary doctorate from
the University of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, McGill, Birmingham, Edinburgh,
Melbourne, Yale, Glasgow, Giessen, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham,
Oxford, Liverpool, Toronto , Bristol, Cape Town, London and Leeds.
Rutherford
married Mary Newton, only daughter of Arthur and Maria de Renzy Newton, in
1900. Their only child, Eileen, married the physicist RH Fowler. Rutherford's
head golf leisure and automotive. He
died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes are buried in the nave of
Westminster Abbey, in western tomb of Sir Isaac Newton and by Lord Kelvin.