At Canterbury, he was awarded a complex BA in Latin, English, and Maths in 1892, a MA in Mathematics and Physical Science in 1893, and a BSc in Chemistry and Geology in 1894. He participated in its debating society and the Science Society. In 1889, after his second attempt, he won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand, between 18. He was offered a cadetship in government service, but he declined as he still had 15 months of college remaining. He also played in the school's rugby team. He studied at Nelson College between 18, and was head boy in 1889. After being awarded the scholarship, Havelock School presented him with a five-volume set of books titled The Peoples of the World. When he was awarded the scholarship, he had received 580 out of 600 possible marks. With these marks, he had the highest of anyone from Nelson. On his first examination attempt, he received 75 out of 130 marks for geography, 76 out of 130 for history, 101 out of 140 for English, and 200 out of 200 for arithmetic, totalling 452 out of 600 marks. In 1887, on his second attempt, he won a scholarship to study at Nelson College. The move was made to be closer to the a flax mill the father was operating near the Ruapaka Stream. At age 11 in 1883, the Rutherford family moved to Havelock, a town in the Marlborough Sounds. When Rutherford was five he moved to Foxhill and attended Foxhill School. Rutherford's birth certificate was mistakenly written as 'Earnest'. He was the fourth of twelve children of James Rutherford, an immigrant farmer and mechanic from Perth, Scotland, and his wife Martha Thompson, a schoolteacher from Hornchurch, England. The chemical element rutherfordium ( 104Rf) was named after him in 1997.Įrnest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 in Brightwater, a town near Nelson, New Zealand. After his death in 1937, he was buried in Westminster Abbey near Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. In honour of his scientific advancements, Rutherford was recognised as a Baron in the peerages of New Zealand and Britain. In the same year, the first controlled experiment to split the nucleus was performed by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under his direction. Under his leadership, the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919. His other achievements include advancing the fields of radio communications and ultrasound technology. He is also credited with developing the atomic numbering system alongside Henry Moseley. As a result, he discovered the emission of a subatomic particle which he initially called the "hydrogen atom", but later (more accurately) named the proton.
In 1917, he performed the first artificially-induced nuclear reaction by conducting experiments where nitrogen nuclei were bombarded with alpha particles. This was done through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering during the gold foil experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, resulting in his conception of the Rutherford model of the atom. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus. Together with Thomas Royds, Rutherford is credited with proving that alpha radiation is composed of helium nuclei. Rutherford's discoveries include the concept of radioactive half-life, the radioactive element radon, and the differentiation and naming of alpha and beta radiation. In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances." He was the first Oceanian Nobel laureate, and the first to perform the awarded work in Canada. Rutherford has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday". Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, PRS, HonFRSE (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics.