New Zealand physicist (1871–1937)
He cracked the atom open. Rutherford proved the nucleus exists, named the proton, sorted alpha from beta radiation, won a Nobel in chemistry, and trained the lab that found the neutron — then got buried between Darwin and Newton.
Born in New Zealand in 1871, Rutherford arrived at atomic physics when radioactivity was still unnamed vapour. By 1908 his work on radioactive decay and element disintegration earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Three years later he interpreted the gold foil scattering results from Geiger and Marsden and proposed that an atom's charge sits in a tiny, dense nucleus — overturning the diffuse-pudding model overnight. He brought Niels Bohr to his lab in 1912; together they sketched the orbital atom. In 1917 he fired alpha particles at nitrogen and knocked loose what he first called a hydrogen…
Sourced, dated quotes from Ernest Rutherford
It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.
We may in these processes obtain very great quantities of energy, but on the average we cannot hope to obtain energy for practical use in this way.
It is just as surprising as if a gunner fired a shell at a single sheet of paper and for some reason or other the projectile bounded back again.
Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced.
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