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Ernest Rutherford photo by Sadi Carnot

Top 10 Facts about Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. He was considered to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791鈥�1867). Apart from his work in his homeland, he spent a substantial amount of his career abroad, in both Canada and the United Kingdom.

He was the son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England.[ James had emigrated to New Zealand from Perth, Scotland, “to raise a little flax and a lot of children”. Ernest was born at Brightwater, near Nelson, New Zealand. His first name was mistakenly spelled ‘Earnest’ when his birth was registered. Rutherford’s mother Martha Thompson was a schoolteacher.

Rutherford studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand, where he participated in the debating society and played rugby. After gaining his BA, MA and BSc, and doing two years of research during which he invented a new form of radio receiver.

In 1895 Rutherford was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, to travel to England for postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

He was among the first of the ‘aliens’ (those without a Cambridge degree) allowed to do research at the university, under the leadership of J. J. Thomson, which aroused jealousies from the more conservative members of the Cavendish fraternity. 

Here are  Top 10 Facts about Ernest Rutherford

1. Rutherford, and his colleagues, first demonstrated the atomic nucleus

He was part of a team that first demonstrated the existence of the atomic nucleus. While collaborating with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, the trio worked on the now-famous Geiger-Marsden experiment (also known as the Rutherford gold foil experiment).

The experiments were conducted by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under the direction of Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester in the early-1900s.

Designed to help understand the structure of the atom, the results of the experiment were quite surprising to the scientific community. Their discovery of the atomic nucleus became an integral part of Rutherford’s famous model of the atom we know and love today.

2. He helped invent the now ubiquitous Geiger counter

Geiger and Rutherford photo by Unknown author

Ernest Rutherford contributed to the invention of the Geiger counter. He worked with the German physicist Hans Geiger, who the device is named after, to develop an electrical counter for ionized particles. 

Rutherford and Geiger developed a method of detecting alpha particles through gold foil and a screen. When this happened, barely perceptible flashes of light would be emitted, which could be counted — with enough dedication and patience. 

But the process was laborious, and Geiger managed to devise an automated method of counting each individual “flash”. The Geiger counter was born, and it has since become the universal tool for measuring radioactivity. 

The first versions could only detect alpha particles, but later refinements by Geiger’s student Walther M眉ller were sensitive to all types of ionizing radiation.

3. Rutherford is considered to have been among the greatest scientists in history

Ernest Rutherford photo by ENERGY.GOV

Rutherford鈥檚 strengths as a scientist are legion. A prolific, practical inventor and scientific theorist, his ideas were based on rigorous experimentation. He has three discovery .

Ernest Rutherford鈥檚 three major discoveries shaped modern science, created nuclear physics and changed the way that we envisage the structure of the atom.

Rutherford鈥檚 first discovery was that elements are not immutable, but can change their structure naturally, from heavy elements to slightly lighter. This led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908, at the age of 37, for his work on the transmutation of elements and the chemistry of radioactive material.

His second discovery, the nuclear model of the atom, became the basis for how we see the atom today: a tiny nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons.

He built on this discovery for his third great achievement, the splitting of the atom, making him, as John Campbell says, in his biography of Rutherford in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 鈥渢he world鈥檚 first successful alchemist鈥�

4. He was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 

This was 鈥渇or his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.鈥� Then Rutherford performed his most famous work after receiving the Nobel prize.

5.Ernest Rutherford was second only to Michael Faraday as an experimentalist

Ernest Rutherford is widely considered to be the greatest scientific experimentalist since the equally talented Michael Faraday. His lifetime’s work would revolve, primarily, with the study of radioactivity. 

Through his experiments, Rutherford would develop his concept of the nuclear atom which ultimately drove the study of nuclear physics thereafter. For his exceptional work, Rutherford would receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908 and was also appointed the president of the esteemed Royal Society between 1925 and 1930. 

He was later also appointed the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1923, was conferred the Order of Merit in 1925, and was raised to the peerage as Lord Rutherford of Nelson in 1931.

6. Element 104, rutherfordium, is named after him

Electron_shell_104_Rutherfordium photo by Greg Robson

Rutherfordium (Rf)was an artificially produced radioactive transuranium element in Group IVb of the periodic table, atomic number 104. Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced in 1964 the discovery of element 104.

It was named kurchatovium, symbol Ku (for Igor Kurchatov, a Soviet nuclear physicist). In 1969, a group of American researchers at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had identified isotopes of the element. 

The element were different from the one identified by the Soviets; the Americans then proposed the name rutherfordium, in honor of the British physicist Ernest Rutherford.

7. Rutherford published several books

Ernest Rutherford photo by Sadi Carnot

Some his books that he has published include like Radioactivity (1904); Radioactive Transformations (1906), being his Silliman Lectures at Yale University; Radiation from Radioactive Substances, with James Chadwick and C.D. Ellis (1919, 1930).

A thoroughly documented book which serves as a chronological list of his many papers to learned societies, etc.; The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926); The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements (1933); The Newer Alchemy (1937).

8. Rutherford was knighted in 1914.

During World War I, he worked on a top secret project to solve the practical problems of submarine detection by sonar.[26] In 1916, he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. In 1919, he returned to the Cavendish succeeding J. J. Thomson as the Cavendish professor and Director.

9. Ernest Rutherford is the father of nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics

Ernest Rutherford 1919 Experiment Interpretation Photo by Steven B Krivit

 He discovered and named the atomic nucleus, the proton, the alpha particle, and the beta particle. He discovered the concept of nuclear half-lives and achieved the first deliberate transformation of one element into another, fulfilling one of the ancient passions of the alchemists.

10. He liked cars and his hobby was playing golf 

Ernest Rutherford was his love for cars and golf in his spare time. He firmly believed in the old adage of “work hard, play hard”, and so, in 1910 he bought his very first motor car