Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, His father James Rutherford of Scotland is one wheelwright, who migrated to New Zealand with my grandfather and his entire family in 1842. His mother, née Martha Thompson, was a school teacher in the UK. Ernest received his early education in government schools Nelson Collegiate School at the age of 16 years. In 1889 he was awarded a scholarship University and he moved to the University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he entered Canterbury College *.
He graduated MA in 1893 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Science, and then he went on to study at the College for a short time, and received his B.Sc. in the following year. In the same year, 1894, he won a scholarship in Science in 1851 that allowed him to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under JJ Thomson. In 1897 he was awarded the title B.A. Research Degree and the Coutts-Trotter Studentship of Trinity College. The opportunity came when the position Chair of Physics at McGill University, Montreal, became vacant, and in 1898 he left for Canada to take the Position of the.
Rutherford returned to England in 1907 to become Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, succeeding Sir Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he accepted an invitation to Sir Joseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. He also became Chairman of the Advisory Council, HM Government, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London, and Director of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge.
On his arrival at Cambridge his talents quickly recognized by Professor Thomson. During the first study at the Cavendish Laboratory, he invented a detector for electromagnetic waves, an important feature ingenious magnetizing coil containing tiny magnetic iron wire collection. She works together with Thomson observed the behavior of ions yangdalam gas has given X-rays, and also, in 1897, on the mobility of ions in relation to the electric field strength, and on related topics such as the photoelectric effect. In 1898 he reported the existence of alpha and beta rays in uranium radiation and indicated some of their research.
In Montreal, there are many opportunities for research at McGill, and his work in the field of radioactivity, especially the emission of alpha rays, was continued in the Macdonald Laboratory. With RB Owens he studied the "emanation" of thorium and discovered a new noble gas, a radioactive isotope, which became known as thoron. Frederick Soddy arrived at McGill in 1900 from Oxford, and he collaborated with Rutherford in creating the "disintegration theory" of radioactivity which considers radioactive phenomena as atomic - not molecular - processes. This theory is supported by a large number of experimental evidence, a number of new radioactive substances were found and their position in the series of transformations has been established. Otto Hahn, who later discovered atomic fission, worked under Rutherford at the Montreal Laboratory in 1905-06.
At Manchester, Rutherford continued his research on the properties of radium emanation and alpha rays and, together with H. Geiger, a method of detecting a single alpha particle and calculate the amount of radium in the flats and beamed. In 1910, his investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and the nature of the structure of the atom which caused the spread of the causes postulation of the concept of "core (atom)", which contribute in physics. Niels Bohr in 1912 to join him in Manchester and he adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantum theory and the theory of atomic structure obtained, with later improvements, mainly as a result of Heisenberg's concepts, remains valid to this day. In 1913, together with HG Moseley, he used cathode rays to bombard atoms of various elements and demonstrate that the structures associated with a group of lines that characterize the elements. Each element can then be assigned an atomic number and, more importantly, the nature of each element can be defined by this number. In 1919, during the last year in Manchester, he found that the nuclei of light elements, such as nitrogen, can be "devastated" by the impact of energetic alpha particles coming from some radioactive sources, and that during this process fast protons were emitted. Blackett later proved, with the cloud chamber, the nitrogen in this process is completely transformed into an oxygen isotope, so that Rutherford was the first to deliberately change one element into another. G. de Hevesy was also one of the collaborators Rutherford at Manchester.
An inspiring leader of the Cavendish Laboratory, he led many Nobel Prize winners in the future against their great achievements: Chadwick, Blackett, Cockcroft and Walton, while the other Nobel laureates who worked with him at the Cavendish shorter or longer periods: GP Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston. C.D. Ellis, co-author in 1919 and 1930, showed "that the majority of experiments at the Cavendish was really started by Rutherford's direct or indirect suggestion". He remained active and worked until the end of his life.
Rutherford published several books: Radioactivity (1904); Radioactive Transformations (1906); radiation from radioactive substances, with James Chadwick and CD Ellis (1919, 1930) - a fully documented book serves as a chronological list of the many documents to learn society, and so on; Structure of Electrical Matter (1926), The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements (1933), The Newer Alchemy (1937).
Rutherford was given a knighthood in 1914, he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1925, and in 1931 he was created First Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand, and Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903 and was its President from 1925 to 1930. Among his many awards, he was awarded the Rumford Medal (1905) and Copley medal (1922) from the Royal Society, Bressa Prize (1910) from the Turin Academy of Science, the Albert Medal (1928) from the Royal Society of Art, the Faraday Medal (1930) of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the D. Sc level of the University of New Zealand, and honorary doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, McGill, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Yale, Glasgow, Giessen, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham, Oxford, Liverpool, Toronto, Bristol, Cape Town, London and Leeds.
Rutherford married Mary Newton, daughter of Arthur and Maria de Renzy Newton, in 1900. Their only child, Eileen, married the physicist RH Fowler. He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, in western Sir Isaac Newton's tomb and by Lord Kelvin.
:.