Portrait of Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand-born physicist and Nobel Laureate, aged 21. Rutherford was the son of a farmer, but gained a sch

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Portrait of Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) New Zealand-born physicist and Nobel Laureate, aged 21. Rutherford was the son of a farmer, but gained a scholarship to Canterbury College and later to Cambridge. He developed the concept of radioactive decay, and proposed the existence of the proton from experiments in 1914. In his studies of alpha particles, he deduced the structure of the atom as a tiny nucleus with orbiting electrons, the view held today. In 1917, Rutherford became the first to split an atom artificially, again using alpha particles. He received the 1908 Nobel Prize for chemistry, and was knighted in 1914.

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Keywords: 1908, discoverer, ernest, laureate, nobel, physicist, physics, portraits, prize, proton, recipient, rutherford, surname, winner