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===Nuclear physics===
===Nuclear physics===
Rutherford's research, and work done under him as laboratory director, established the nuclear structure of the atom and the essential nature of radioactive decay. Rutherford's team also demonstrated artificially induced [[nuclear transmutation]]. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford died too early to see [[Leó Szilárd]]'s idea of controlled [[nuclear chain reaction]]s come into being. A speech of Rutherford's printed in the September 12, 1933 London paper [[The Times]] is reported by Szilárd to have been his inspiration for thinking of the possibility of a controlled [[nuclear chain reaction]], in London, on the same day. Rutherford's speech touched on the 1932 work of [[John Cockcroft]] and [[Ernest Walton]] in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. The speech in part, read:
Rutherford's research, and work done under him as laboratory director, established the nuclear structure of the atom and the essential nature of radioactive decay. Rutherford's team also demonstrated artificially induced [[nuclear transmutation]]. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford died too early to see [[Leó Szilárd]]'s idea of controlled [[nuclear chain reaction]]s come into being. A speech of Rutherford's printed in the September 12, 1933 London paper [[The Times]] is reported by Szilárd to have been his inspiration for thinking of the possibility of a controlled [[nuclear chain reaction]], in London, on the same day. <big>I Said No!!![[</big><big><big>Big text</big><big><big>I Said No!!!</big><big>Big text</big>!</big></big>John Cockcroft]] and [[Ernest Walton]] in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. The speech in part, read:


:''We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.''<ref>[http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/ The Times archives], September 12, 1933, "The British association—breaking down the atom"</ref>
:''We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.''<ref>[http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/ The Times archives], September 12, 1933, "The British association—breaking down the atom"</ref>

Revision as of 13:53, 17 October 2011

The Lord Rutherford of Nelson
File:Ernest Rutherford cropped.jpg
Lord Rutherford of Nelson
Born(1871-08-30)30 August 1871
Brightwater, New Zealand
Died19 October 1937(1937-10-19) (aged 66)
Cambridge, England
NationalityBritish-New Zealander
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom
Alma materUniversity of Canterbury
University of Cambridge
Known forFather of nuclear physics
Rutherford model
Rutherford scattering
Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy
Discovery of proton
Rutherford (unit)
Coining the term 'artificial disintegration'
AwardsRumford Medal (1905)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1908)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1910)
Matteucci Medal (1913)
Copley Medal (1922)
Franklin Medal (1924)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysicist-Chemist
InstitutionsMcGill University
University of Manchester
Academic advisorsAlexander Bickerton
J. J. Thomson
Doctoral studentsNazir Ahmed
Norman Alexander
Edward Victor Appleton
Robert William Boyle
Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry
Alexander MacAulay
Cecil Powell
Ernest Walton
C. E. Wynn-Williams
Other notable studentsEdward Andrade
Edward Victor Appleton
Patrick Blackett
Niels Bohr
Bertram Boltwood
Harriet Brooks
Teddy Bullard
James Chadwick
John Cockcroft
Charles Galton Darwin
Charles Drummond Ellis
Kazimierz Fajans
Hans Geiger
Otto Hahn
Douglas Hartree
Pyotr Kapitsa
George Laurence
Iven Mackay
Ernest Marsden
Mark Oliphant
A. J. B. Robertson
Henry DeWolf Smyth
Frederick Soddy
Signature

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS[1] (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics.[2] 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. This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".[3]

Rutherford performed his most famous work after he had moved to the UK in 1907 and was already a Nobel laureate. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus,[4] and thereby pioneered the Rutherford 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 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton.[5] This led to the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner, performed by two students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932. After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named for him in 1997.

Biography

Ernest Rutherford was the son of James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England.[6] James had emigrated to New Zealand from Perth, Scotland, "to raise a little flax and a lot of children". Ernest was born at Spring Grove (now Brightwater), near Nelson, New Zealand. His first name was mistakenly spelled Earnest when his birth was registered.[7]

He studied at Havelock School and then Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand where he was president of the debating society, among other things. After gaining his BA, MA and BSc, and doing two years of research at the forefront of electrical technology, in 1895 Rutherford travelled to England for postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (1895–1898),[8] and he briefly held the world record for the distance over which electromagnetic waves could be detected.

In 1898 Rutherford was appointed to succeed Hugh Longbourne Callendar in the chair of Macdonald Professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he did the work that gained him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. In 1900 he gained a DSc from the University of New Zealand. Also in 1900 he married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1945); they had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married Ralph Fowler. In 1907 Rutherford moved to Britain to take the chair of physics at the University of Manchester.

Later years and honours

He was knighted in 1914. In 1916 he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. In 1919 he returned to the Cavendish as Director. Under him, Nobel Prizes were awarded to James Chadwick for discovering the neutron (in 1932), John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton for an experiment which was to be known as splitting the atom using a particle accelerator, and Edward Appleton for demonstrating the existence of the ionosphere. He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1925 and raised to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridge, in 1931,[9] a title that became extinct upon his unexpected death in hospital following an operation for an umbilical hernia (1937). Since he was a peer, British protocol at that time required that he be operated on by a titled doctor, and the delay cost him his life.[10] He is interred in Westminster Abbey, alongside J. J. Thomson, and near Sir Isaac Newton.

Scientific research

During the investigation of radioactivity he coined the terms alpha ray and beta ray in 1899 to describe the two distinct types of radiation emitted by thorium and uranium. These rays were differentiated on the basis of penetrating power. From 1900 to 1903 he was joined at McGill by the young Frederick Soddy (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1921) and they collaborated on research into the transmutation of elements. Rutherford had demonstrated that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. He noticed that a sample of radioactive material invariably took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay—its "half-life"—and created a practical application using this constant rate of decay as a clock, which could then be used to help determine the age of the Earth, which turned out to be much older than most of the scientists at the time believed.

In 1903, Rutherford realised that a type of radiation from radium discovered (but not named) by French chemist Paul Villard in 1900, must represent something different from alpha rays and beta rays, due to its very much greater penetrating power. Rutherford gave this third type of radiation its name also: the gamma ray.

In Manchester he continued to work with alpha radiation. In conjunction with Hans Geiger he developed zinc sulfide scintillation screens and ionisation chambers to count alphas. By dividing the total charge they produced by the number counted, Rutherford decided that the charge on the alpha was two. In late 1907 Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds allowed alphas to penetrate a very thin window into an evacuated tube. As they sparked the tube into discharge, the spectrum obtained from it changed, as the alphas accumulated in the tube. Eventually, the clear spectrum of helium gas appeared, proving that alphas were at least ionised helium atoms, and probably helium nuclei.

Rutherford remains the only science Nobel Prize winner to have performed his most famous work after receiving the prize. Along with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 he carried out the Geiger–Marsden experiment, which demonstrated the nuclear nature of atoms. Rutherford was inspired to ask Geiger and Marsden in this experiment to look for alpha particles with very high deflection angles, of a type not expected from any theory of matter at that time. Such deflections, though rare, were found, and proved to be a smooth but high-order function of the deflection angle. It was Rutherford's interpretation of this data that led him to formulate the Rutherford model of the atom in 1911 — that a very small positively charged nucleus was orbited by electrons.

Before leaving Manchester in 1919 to take over the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, Rutherford became in 1917 the first person to deliberately transmute one element into another, when he converted nitrogen into oxygen through the nuclear reaction 14N + α → 17O + proton.  In the products of this reaction he recognized the particle radiation from earlier experiments in which he had bombarded hydrogen gas with alpha particles, and thus as hydrogen nuclei. This result showed that hydrogen nuclei were a part of nitrogen nuclei (and by inference, probably other nuclei as well). Such a construction had been suspected for many years on the basis of atomic weights which were whole numbers of that of hydrogen; see Prout's hypothesis. Now Rutherford decided that a hydrogen nucleus was a fundamental building block and a particle, which he named the proton.

In 1921, while working with Niels Bohr (who postulated that electrons moved in specific orbits), Rutherford theorised about the existence of neutrons, which could somehow compensate for the repelling effect of the positive charges of protons by causing an attractive nuclear force and thus keeping the nuclei from breaking apart. Rutherford's theory of neutrons was proved in 1932 by his associate James Chadwick, who in 1935 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

Legacy

A plaque commemorating Rutherford's presence at the Victoria University, Manchester

Nuclear physics

Rutherford's research, and work done under him as laboratory director, established the nuclear structure of the atom and the essential nature of radioactive decay. Rutherford's team also demonstrated artificially induced nuclear transmutation. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford died too early to see Leó Szilárd's idea of controlled nuclear chain reactions come into being. A speech of Rutherford's printed in the September 12, 1933 London paper The Times is reported by Szilárd to have been his inspiration for thinking of the possibility of a controlled nuclear chain reaction, in London, on the same day. I Said No!!![[Big textI Said No!!!Big text!John Cockcroft]] and Ernest Walton in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. The speech in part, read:

We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.[11]

Items named in honour of Rutherford's life and work

A statue of Ernest Rutherford at his memorial in Brightwater, New Zealand.
Scientific discoveries
Institutions
Buildings
Major streets
Other
  • The Rutherford Memorial at Brightwater, New Zealand
  • The crater Rutherford on the Moon, and the crater Rutherford on Mars
  • The Rutherford Award at Thomas Carr College for excellence in VCE Chemistry, Australia
  • Image on the obverse of the New Zealand $100 note (since 1992).
  • Rutherford was the subject of a play by Stuart Hoar.
  • On the side of the Mond Laboratory on the site of the original Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, there is an engraving in Rutherford's memory in the form of a crocodile, this being the nickname given to him by its commissioner, his colleague Peter Kapitza. The initials of the engraver, Eric Gill, are visible within the mouth.
  • The Rutherford Foundation, a charitable trust set up by the Royal Society of New Zealand to support research in science and technology.[15]

Publications

  • Radio-activity (1904), 2nd ed. (1905), ISBN 978-1-60355-058-1
  • Radioactive Transformations (1906), ISBN 978-1-60355-054-3
  • Radiations from Radioactive Substances (1919)
  • The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926)
  • The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements (1933)
  • The Newer Alchemy (1937)

Famous statements

  • "The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." – 1933[16]
  • "It was almost as if you fired a 15 inch shell into a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.” (describing the Geiger-Marsden experiment)
  • "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" (though he was in 1908 awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry)
  • "We haven't the money, so we've got to think."[17]

Arms

Coat of arms of Ernest Rutherford
Notes
The arms of Ernest Rutherford consist of:[18][19]
Crest
A baron's coronet. On a helm wreathed of the Colors, a kiwi Proper.
Escutcheon
Per saltire arched Gules and Or, two inescutcheons voided of the first in fess, within each a martlet Sable.
Supporters
Dexter, Hermes Trismegistus (patron saint of knowledge and alchemists). Sinister, a Maori warrior.
Motto
Primordia Quaerere Rerum ("To seek the first principles of things." Lucretius.)

See also

References

  1. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1098/rsbm.1938.0025, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1098/rsbm.1938.0025 instead.
  2. ^ "Ernest Rutherford: British physicist". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  3. ^ The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 2011-01-26.
  4. ^ M. S. Longair (2003). Theoretical concepts in physics: an alternative view of theoretical reasoning in physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 377–378. ISBN 9780521528788.
  5. ^ Ernest Rutherford | NZHistory.net.nz, New Zealand history online. Nzhistory.net.nz (1937-10-19). Retrieved on 2011-01-26.
  6. ^ McLintock, A.H. (18 September 2007). "Rutherford, Sir Ernest (Baron Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., F.R.S.)". An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966 ed.). Te Ara — The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. ISBN 978-0-478-18451-8. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  7. ^ Campbell, John. "Rutherford, Ernest 1871–1937". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  8. ^ "Rutherford, Ernest (RTRT895E)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  9. ^ "No. 33683". The London Gazette. 23 January 1931.
  10. ^ D.A. Ramsay (2001). "Book review of Rutherford, Scientist Supreme by J. Campbell". ISI Short Book Reviews. International Statistical Institute. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  11. ^ The Times archives, September 12, 1933, "The British association—breaking down the atom"
  12. ^ Michael Freemantle (2003). "ACS Article on Rutherfordium". Chemical & Engineering News. American Chemical Society. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  13. ^ "ErnestRutherford Physics Building". Virtual McGill. McGill University. 24 January 2000. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  14. ^ http://www.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/buildings/51sprruth.htm
  15. ^ Lord Rutherford may have left a deadly legacy « Lord Rutherford may have left a deadly legacy « News « Royal Society of New Zealand. Royalsociety.org.nz. Retrieved on 2011-01-26.
  16. ^ Hendee, William R.; Ritenour, E. Russell (2002). Medical imaging physics. John Wiley and Sons. p. 21. ISBN 0471382264. Retrieved 2010-09-07.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ "Alexander Fleming learning enquiry". Beautiful Minds capture the spirit of Nobel achievement. British Library. Retrieved 2011-07-22.
  18. ^ Pais, Abraham (1999). Line of Succession: Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 216. ISBN 0-19-851997-4.
  19. ^ "Coat-of-Arms of Ernest Rutherford". Escutcheons of Science. Numericana.

Further reading

  • Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1039/RR9710400129, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1039/RR9710400129 instead.
  • J. Campbell (1999) Rutherford: Scientist Supreme, AAS Publications, Christchurch
  • Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1098/rspa.1954.0254, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1098/rspa.1954.0254 instead.
  • Reeves, Richard (2008). A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-33369-8
  • Rhodes, Richard (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44133-7
  • Wilson, David (1983). Rutherford. Simple Genius, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-23805-4
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Rutherford of Nelson
1931–1937
Extinct

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