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Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", [ 7 ] and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday ". [ 8 ]
[12] [13] Rutherford proposed a model of the atom in which a very small, dense and positively charged nucleus of protons was surrounded by orbiting, negatively charged electrons (the Rutherford model). [14] Niels Bohr improved upon this in 1913 by reconciling it with the quantum behaviour of electrons (the Bohr model). [15] [16] [17]
The Rutherford model served to concentrate a great deal of the atom's charge and mass to a very small core, but did not attribute any structure to the remaining electrons and remaining atomic mass. It did mention the atomic model of Hantaro Nagaoka , in which the electrons are arranged in one or more rings, with the specific metaphorical ...
The atom was fully split in a controlled manner in 1932 by British and Irish researchers John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton under Rutherford’s supervision.
Atoms split naturally, but in 1919, Rutherford oversaw the first artificially-induced nuclear reaction in human history at the Victoria University of Manchester's laboratories.
Rutherford concluded that the alpha particles struck the nuclei of the nitrogen atoms, causing hydrogen ions to split off. [76] [77] These observations led Rutherford to conclude that the hydrogen nucleus was a singular particle with a positive charge equal to that of the electron's negative charge.
Rutherford stated, "...we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated," while the newspapers stated he had split the atom. This was the first observation of a nuclear reaction, that is, a reaction in which particles from one decay are used to transform another atomic nucleus. It also offered a new way to study the nucleus.
In 1932, physicists John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton, and Ernest Rutherford discovered that when lithium atoms were "split" by protons from a proton accelerator, immense amounts of energy were released in accordance with the principle of mass–energy equivalence. [1]