Ernest Rutherford
| Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand physicist and philosopher, used an agent of the Science Church to play a role in quantum mechanics. He was educated at Cavendish Laboratory (Cecil bloc) of the University of Cambridge under JJ Thomson (discovery of the electron). He discovered the radioactive gas Radon (cause of lung cancer) at McGill University with Frederick Soddy (Royal Society, theory of isotopes) and University of Manchester. His assistant Otto Hahn created the first nuclear fission with Radon. He experimented with uranium samples of Marie Curie and William Crookes (Society for Psychical Research) and thorium. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1913 he and Niels Bohr introduced the Bohr model of the atom. |  |
He was the president of the Royal Society from 1925 to 1930.
His radiometric dating technique is used in the Science Church to determine the age of objects like the moon.
Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics (strict distinction between macroscopic and microscopic objects) became known as the Copenhagen interpretation. He adapted his atomic model after the exclusion principle of Wolfgang Pauli.
In 1937 he wrote the Newer Alchemy.
In 1944 he met with Felix Frankfurter, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.
He was the teacher of Otto Hahn (nuclear fission), Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of Charles Darwin), Patrick Blackett, John Cockcroft and Methodist Ernest Walton (Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting lithium atoms with a particle accelerator).
His student at Cavendish Laboratory James Chadwick, head of the British team of the Manhattan Project, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving Rutherford's theory of neutrons by bombarding berylium with alpha particles.
A street at CERN in Geneva and the radioactive element Rutherfordium was named after him.
His daughter married physicist Ralph Fowler (Royal Society, Solvay Conferences).
Stephen Rea (V for Vendetta) played Bohr in BBC propaganda Copenhagen with Daniel Craig (James Bond) as Werner Heisenberg.
born 8/30/1871.
died 10/19/1937.
back