Ernest+Rutherford+09

= Ernest Rutherford =

=Birth:= Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871 to the children of immigrants from England.

Place of Birth:
Ernest was born in New Zealand in a little port town called Nelson on the South Island at the north end. =Occupation:= He was a professor at the McGill University in Montreal in 1898. He went on to help Fredrick Soddy create a whole new branch of physics called radioactivity. During the first world war he helped develop submarine detection programs. Then in 1919 he succeeded his teacher and friend Joseph Thompson as the director of the Cavendish physics department at Cambridge. Ernest also further delved into the structure of atoms and proved Thompson's plum pudding theory wrong. Ernest had also won the Nobel Peace prize for chemistry in 1908.

Known For:
Ernest Rutherford is mostly known for discovering the correct structure of atoms. His friend and teacher Joseph Thompson had developed a hypothesis that said that an atom was lots of neutrons all squished together and when you fired very very small particles at it it just chipped bits off, like plum pudding because plum pudding has raisins in it and if you fired thigs at it the raisins woud get knocked out. The actual structure of the atom is protons and neutrons in the middle and electrons whizzing around the outside. Ernest discovered that by firing particles at atoms. Most of the time the particles went staight through, but occationally they bounced straight back. This along whith other thing helped prove his theory that most of it was empty space.

Science Explanation:
In Ernest's day the common people didn't know much about things like physics. They thought they should leave it to the pro's. But Ernest's mother was a school teacher and the 12 children were encouraged to learn and explore what they didn't know. Ernest didn't want to leave well enough alone, he wanted to teach and learn so he devoted his life to learning and discovering about physics.

Career:
Ernest Rutherford's career consisted of many things some of the main ones being that he discovered a more accurate model of the atom he thought that there were spaces in between the neutrons and electrons. There is also the new branch of physics called radioactivity having to do with things like X-rays. He also helped the government develop methods of submarine detection. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for chemistry in 1908.

Death:
Ernest Rutherford died 19 October 1937 at 66 years old. Though he died quite young Ernest had no shortage of contribution to the scientific world.

Did You Know:
Ernest had a family with 14 members 12 of which were siblings. Ernest enjoyed motoring and golf. He had one daughter called Eileen who married a physicist.

Citations:
Rutherford, Ernest ." Compton's by Britannica . 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. 9 Sept. 2009 <

Source: Heilbron ,J.L, Ernest Rutherford and the Explosion of the Atoms, Oxford, Oxford University Press, Inc, 2003. Ernest Rutherford Wikipedia contributors//Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia//. 21 September 2009 21:29 UTC

Nobel lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elsevier publishing company, Amsterdam, 1966.