Ernest Rutherford

THE LIFE, WORKS, AND DISCOVERIES OF ERNEST RUTHERFORD

Andikan-Phoebe | JETS Research

 Ernest Rutherford was born in Brightwater, New Zealand, and
lived from 1871-1937. He was talented in both intellect and in
sports themselves, a heavenly combo for any scientists. He had
read a science book at the age of 10, and that's when his love for
science first took shape, as he was so interested he performed
experiments from what the book had told him. He eventually
went through college and was able to go overseas to wok with J. J.
Thomson. He was later made to be J. J. Thomson's replacement at
Cambridge, after the retirement of Thomson.
Rutherford's biggest
contribution to the atomic
theory was the discovery of both
the nucleus of the atom, and of
protons in the atom. This
discovery majorly changed the
way atoms were viewed and
modeled, as now they had to
factor in the nucleus and the
protons. He had discovered the
nucleus through his famous Gold Foil Experiment. In this
experiment, he shot alpha particles out to a sheet of gold foil, but
not all of them made it through, with some even bouncing back.
This experiment made
it clear that there was a
core stopping the
particle from going
through, and he
dubbed it the nucleus.
As for the proton, he
had discovered that
through usage of

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mathematics, creating the nuclear reaction equation. This
equation led him to see that hydrogen produced this equation,
and that it must have its own particle making up the nucleus, and
he dubbed it the proton.

Rutherford's interesting facts are that he had predicted the

existence of a neutron before it was ever officially discovered. He
was also knighted within his lifetime. He also has element 104
named after him, dubbed Rutherfordium.

Rutherford was the central figure in the study of radioactivity, and

with his concept of the nuclear atom he led the exploration
of nuclear physics. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908,
was president of the Royal Society (1925–30) and the British
Association for the Advancement of Science (1923), was conferred
the Order of Merit in 1925, and was raised to the peerage as Lord
Rutherford of Nelson in 1931.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Ernest Rutherford attended the free state schools through 1886,
when he won a scholarship to attend Nelson Collegiate School, a
private secondary school. He excelled in nearly every subject, but
especially in mathematics and science. Another scholarship took
Rutherford in 1890 to Canterbury College in Christchurch, one of
the four campuses of the University of New Zealand. It was a small
school, with a faculty of eight and fewer than 300 students.
Rutherford was fortunate to have excellent professors, who ignited
in him a fascination for scientific investigation tempered with the
need for solid proof.

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 On conclusion of the school’s three-year course, Rutherford
received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree and won a scholarship
for a postgraduate year of study at Canterbury. He completed this
at the end of 1893, earning a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree with
first-class honours in physical science, mathematics, and
mathematical physics. He was encouraged to remain yet another
year in Christchurch to conduct independent research.
Rutherford’s investigation of the ability of a high-frequency
electrical discharge, such as that from a capacitor, to magnetize
iron earned him a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree at the end of
1894. During this period, he fell in love with Mary Newton, the
daughter of the woman in whose house he boarded. They married
in 1900.

In 1895 Rutherford won a scholarship that had been created with

profits from the famous Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He
chose to continue his study at the Cavendish Laboratory of the
University of Cambridge, which J.J. Thomson, Europe’s leading
expert on electromagnetic radiation, had taken over in 1884.

WORKS/DISCOVERIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Besides showing that an oscillatory discharge would magnetize

iron, which happened already to be known, Rutherford
determined that a magnetized needle lost some of its
magnetization in a magnetic field produced by an alternating
current. This made the needle a detector of electromagnetic
waves, a phenomenon that had only recently been discovered. In
1864 the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell had predicted the
existence of such waves, and between 1885 and 1889 the German

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physicist Heinrich Hertz had detected them in experiments in his
laboratory. Rutherford’s apparatus for detecting electromagnetic
waves, or radio waves, was simpler and had commercial potential.
He spent the next year in the Cavendish Laboratory increasing the
range and sensitivity of his device, which could receive signals
from half a mile away. However, Rutherford lacked the
intercontinental vision and entrepreneurial skills of the Italian
inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who invented
the wireless telegraph in 1896.

X-rays were discovered in Germany by physicist Wilhelm Conrad

Röntgen only a few months after Rutherford arrived at the
Cavendish. For their ability to take silhouette photographs of
the bones in a living hand, X-rays were fascinating to scientists
and laypeople alike. Scientists wished to learn their properties and
what they were. Rutherford could not decline the honour of
Thomson’s invitation to collaborate on an investigation of the way
in which X-rays changed the conductivity of gases. This yielded a
classic paper on ionization—the breaking
of atoms or molecules into positive and negative parts (ions)—
and the charged particles’ attraction to electrodes of the opposite
polarity.

Thomson then studied the charge-to-mass ratio of the most

common ion, which later was called the electron, while
Rutherford pursued other radiations that produced ions.
Rutherford first looked at ultraviolet radiation and then at
radiation emitted by uranium. (Uranium radiation was first
detected in 1896 by the French physicist Henri Becquerel.)
Placement of uranium near thin foils revealed to Rutherford that
the radiation was more complex than previously thought: one
type was easily absorbed or blocked by a very thin foil, but
another type often penetrated the same thin foils. He named
these radiation types alpha and beta, respectively, for simplicity.
(It was later determined that the alpha particle is the same as

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the nucleus of an ordinary helium atom—consisting of
two protons and two neutrons—and the beta particle is the same
as an electron or its positive version, a positron.) For the next
several years these radiations were of primary interest; later
the radioactive elements, or radioelements, which were
emitting radiation, enjoyed most of the scientific attention.

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