Ernest Rutherford biography

Lord Ernest Rutherford (August 30, 1871 – October 19, 1937) British physicist and chemist. He was born in Nelson, New Zealand. Son of Martha Thompson and James Rutherford. His father was a Scottish farmer and mechanic, and his mother, an English teacher who emigrated before getting married. It was the fourth of eleven brothers, their parents wanted to give their children a good education. At school, his teacher encouraged him a lot, and he turned out to be a brilliant student, which allowed him to enter Nelson College, where he spent three years. He also developed great qualities for rugby, which made him very popular in his school. Last year, he took first place in all the courses he took and thanks to this he entered Canterbury College. In the university, he participated in the scientific and reflection clubs and did not leave aside his practices of rugby.

Later he deepened his studies in mathematics, thanks to a scholarship, in the University of New Zealand and later in the one of Cambridge, he stood out by his curiosity and his capacity for the arithmetic and the chemical problems. He began to develop his first investigations, showed that iron could be magnetized by means of high frequencies, which in itself was a discovery. His excellent academic results allowed him to continue his studies and his research for five years at the University. He graduated from Christchurch with a Master of Arts degree.

In the Cavendish Laboratories of Cambridge, he managed to carry out his practices under the direction of the discoverer of the electron, Joseph John Thomson from 1895. He was the first overseas student to achieve this possibility. But before leaving to undertake this adventure, he got engaged with Mary Newton, a young woman from Christchurch. Several years later and thanks to his hard work, he was appointed professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Upon his return to the United Kingdom, he joined the faculty of the University of Manchester giving the experimental physics class. Thomson left the position of director of the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and Ernest replaced him. Simultaneously he held a chair at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London.

“If your experiment needs statistics, it would have been necessary to do a better experiment.” Ernest Rutherford

For the year 1896, the physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. This finding made a great impression on Ernest Rutherford and began to investigate, as time passed, he identified the three main components of radiation: alpha, beta and gamma rays. He indicated that alpha particles are helium nuclei. Ernest surprised the world of science with the formulation of the theory of atomic structure, being the first to describe the atom as a dense nucleus around which electrons revolve. As a reward, he was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1903 and later president.

In 1911, Ernest Rutherford described a new atomic model, which was then polished by Niels Bohr. According to this model, the atom had a central nucleus in which most of the mass was concentrated, as well as positive electric charges, and an electron shell. He managed to demonstrate experimentally that theory from the deviations given in the trajectory of the particles emitted by radioactive substances. The experiments carried out by Rutherford allowed, in addition, the establishment of a dimension order for the real extensions of the atomic nucleus. In addition, he investigated the ionization of the air produced by X-rays.

With the collaboration of Frederick Soddy, Rutherford formulated the theory on natural radioactivity related to the spontaneous transformations of the elements. He served as a collaborator in the development of the radiation meter known as Geiger counter, patented by Hans Geiger. For his work in the field of atomic physics, Ernest Rutherford is revered as one of the fathers of this discipline.

His contributions were of great help for the First World War because he studied the detection of submarines by sound waves, being the precursor of these studies. After the dispute, he managed to make the first artificial transmutation of chemical elements by bombarding a nitrogen atom with alpha particles. His contributions are also reflected in written works such as Radioactivity, 1904; Radiations of radioactive substances, 1930, which he wrote with James Chadwick and Charles Drummond Ellis and The New Alchemy, 1937. These works are currently being consulted in libraries and universities around the world.

However, in recognition of his respective investigations into the disintegration of the elements, Rutherford received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. Among other distinctions, he was awarded the titles of Sir and Baron Rutherford of Nelson in 1931. Element 104 of the periodic table was also named Rutherfordium in his honor.

This great scientist dies on October 19, 1937, in Cambridge, England. His mortal remains were buried in the Abbey of Westminster and there rest with those of Sir Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin.