Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30,
1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in
a family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James
Rutherford, a Scottish wheelwright, emigrated to New Zealand with
Ernest's grandfather and the whole family in 1842. His mother,
née Martha Thompson, was an English schoolteacher, who, with
her widowed mother, also went to live there in 1855.
Ernest received his early education in Government schools and at
the age of 16 entered Nelson Collegiate School. In 1889 he was
awarded a University scholarship and he proceeded to the
University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he entered
Canterbury College*. He graduated M.A. in 1893
with a double first in Mathematics and Physical Science and he
continued with research work at the College for a short time,
receiving the B.Sc. degree the following year. That same year,
1894, he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship,
enabling him to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student at
the Cavendish
Laboratory under J.J. Thomson. In 1897 he
was awarded the B.A. Research Degree and the Coutts-Trotter
Studentship of Trinity College. An opportunity came when the
Macdonald Chair of Physics at McGill University, Montreal, became vacant,
and in 1898 he left for Canada to take up the post.
Rutherford returned to England in 1907 to become Langworthy
Professor of Physics in the University of Manchester, succeeding Sir
Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he accepted an invitation to succeed
Sir Joseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at
Cambridge. He also became Chairman of the Advisory Council, H.M.
Government, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research;
Professor of Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London; and Director of
the Royal
Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge.
Rutherford's first researches, in New Zealand, were concerned
with the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency
oscillations, and his thesis was entitled Magnetization of
Iron by High-Frequency Discharges. He was one of the first to
design highly original experiments with high-frequency,
alternating currents. His second paper, Magnetic
Viscosity, was published in the Transactions of the New
Zealand Institute (1896) and contains a description of a
time-apparatus capable of measuring time intervals of a
hundred-thousandth of a second.
On his arrival at Cambridge his talents were quickly recognized
by Professor Thomson. During his first spell at the Cavendish
Laboratory, he invented a detector for electromagnetic waves, an
essential feature being an ingenious magnetizing coil containing
tiny bundles of magnetized iron wire. He worked jointly with
Thomson on the behaviour of the ions observed in gases which had
been treated with X-rays, and also, in 1897, on the mobility of
ions in relation to the strength of the electric field, 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 properties.
In Montreal, there were ample opportunities for research at
McGill, and his work on radioactive bodies, particularly on the
emission of alpha rays, was continued in the Macdonald
Laboratory. With R.B. Owens he studied the "emanation" of thorium
and discovered a new noble gas, an isotope of radon, which was
later to be 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
regards radioactive phenomena as atomic - not molecular -
processes. The theory was supported by a large amount of
experimental evidence, a number of new radioactive substances
were discovered and their position in the series of
transformations was fixed. 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 the radium emanation and of the alpha rays and, in
conjunction with H. Geiger, a method of detecting a single alpha
particle and counting the number emitted from radium was devised.
In 1910, his investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and
the nature of the inner structure of the atom which caused such
scattering led to the postulation of his concept of the
"nucleus", his greatest contribution to physics. According to him
practically the whole mass of the atom and at the same time all
positive charge of the atom is concentrated in a minute space at
the centre. In 1912 Niels Bohr joined him at
Manchester and he adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to
Max Planck's
quantum theory and so obtained a theory of atomic structure
which, with later improvements, mainly as a result of
Heisenberg's concepts, remains valid to this day. In 1913,
together with H. G. Moseley, he used cathode rays to bombard
atoms of various elements and showed that the inner structures
correspond with a group of lines which characterize the elements.
Each element could then be assigned an atomic number and, more
important, the properties of each element could be defined by
this number. In 1919, during his last year at Manchester, he
discovered that the nuclei of certain light elements, such as
nitrogen, could be "disintegrated" by the impact of energetic
alpha particles coming from some radioactive source, and that
during this process fast protons were emitted. Blackett later proved,
with the cloud chamber, that the nitrogen in this process was
actually transformed into an oxygen isotope, so that Rutherford
was the first to deliberately transmute one element into another.
G. de Hevesy was also one of
Rutherford's collaborators at Manchester.
An inspiring leader of the Cavendish Laboratory, he steered
numerous future Nobel Prize winners towards their great
achievements: Chadwick, Blackett,
Cockcroft and
Walton; while other laureates worked with him at the
Cavendish for shorter or longer periods: G.P. Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston. C.D. Ellis, his co-author in 1919
and 1930, pointed out "that the majority of the experiments at
the Cavendish were really started by Rutherford's direct or
indirect suggestion". He remained active and working to the very
end of his life.
Rutherford published several books: Radioactivity (1904);
Radioactive Transformations (1906), being his Silliman
Lectures at Yale
University; Radiation from Radioactive Substances,
with James Chadwick and C.D. Ellis (1919, 1930) - a thoroughly
documented book which serves as a chronological list of his many
papers to learned societies, etc.; The Electrical Structure of
Matter (1926); The Artificial Transmutation of the
Elements (1933); The Newer Alchemy (1937).
Rutherford was knighted 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. Amongst his many honours, he was awarded the Rumford Medal
(1905) and the Copley Medal (1922) of the Royal Society, the
Bressa Prize (1910) of the Turin Academy of Science, the Albert
Medal (1928) of the Royal Society of Arts, the Faraday Medal
(1930) of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the D.Sc.
degree of the University of New Zealand, and honorary doctorates
from the Universities 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, only daughter of Arthur and Mary
de Renzy Newton, in 1900. Their only child, Eileen, married the
physicist R.H. Fowler. Rutherford's chief recreations were golf
and motoring.
He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes were buried
in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just west of Sir Isaac Newton's
tomb and by that of Lord Kelvin.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
* Canterbury College (now Canterbury University) was located in Christchurch, but was administered from the University of New Zealand, Wellington.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1908