Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS (30 August 1871–19 October 1937) was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model, or planetary, model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. He is widely credited as splitting the atom in 1917 and leading the first experiment to "split the nucleus" in a controlled manner by two students under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932.

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM PC FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), was a nuclear physicist from New Zealand. He was known as the "father" of nuclear physics, he pioneered the orbital theory of the atom, in his discovery of Rutherford scattering off the nucleus with the gold foil experiment.

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• Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. ... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.
  • "The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity" in Philosophical Magazine (September 1902)

• All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
  • As quoted in Rutherford at Manchester (1962) by J. B. Birks
  • Unsourced variant: That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is stamp collecting.
  • "Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." (Unsourced)
    • "That which is not measurable is not science." is also attributed to Lord Kelvin

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Fri May 29 07:37:58 2009