Thursday, August 30, 2007

Happy Birthday, Ernest

rutherfordToday in 1871 in Spring Grove, New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford - who famously said: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."


His work took place in the early days of nuclear physics - he discovered the structure of the atom the cause of radioactivity (atomic decay), and alpha and beta radiation. He was the first person to transmute matter (nitrogen into oxygen) and he figured out the principle of half-lives and radioactive dating. But when he won the Nobel Prize - in 1908 - it was categorized as Chemistry.

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2 comments:

  1. mc210:09 PM, September 11, 2007

    Of course Rutherford considered chemistry to be part of physics (which it really is - just a bit of quantum mechanics and some electrodynamics) so I don't imagine he was too bothered by the Nobel award designation

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  2. The Ridger, FCD5:36 AM, September 12, 2007

    I imagine you're right. I meant it to show how much of a seminal figure he was, that 'physics' was so new that his work hadn't been characterized that way.

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