Ernest Rutherford Facts
Ernest Rutherford was an English physicist who was born on August 30, 1871 in New Zealand. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. He has an element, Rutherfordium 104 named after him. He is best known for his work on radioactivity. Rutherford coined the terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ and described two different types of radiation emitted by Uranium and Thorium.
Facts you didn’t know: –
- He studied at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand then he moved to England in 1895 for further studies at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
- In 1908, he was awarded the Noble Prize in Chemistry for his work on the transmutation of elements and radioactive materials.
- When he was in college, he invented a new and different type of radio receiver. Later he was awarded a research fellowship.
- In 1898, Rutherford was offered a position of physics professor at McGill University in Montreal. He was only 27 years old at that time.
- He served as the President of the Royal Society.
- Rutherford was born with an umbilical hernia.
- In 1914, he was knighted for his contributions in science and inducted as a member of the Order of Merit.
- At Cambridge University, he built a new world record breaking radio receiver that was capable of detecting radio waves at 0.5 mile.
- Rutherford introduced a new theory that radioactive elements have half lives. This was the time when he coined the term half-life.
