Ernest Rutherford - 'Father' of nuclear physics

Ernest Rutherford is a physicist operating in the field of radiation and atomic construction. He is considered the "father" of nuclear physics after introducing the 'Atomic Planet' model to explain 'experiment on gold leaves'. Thanks to his discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in the city of Nelson, New Zealand in a well-off family. His father was a car mechanic and his mother was an English teacher.

At the age of 16, Rutherford attended Nelson High School, one of New Zealand's famous schools at the time. Thanks to his outstanding academic achievements, when graduating in 1889, Rutherford was awarded a scholarship, studying at Wellington University. In 1893, he graduated with an excellent degree in mathematics and scientific physics.

After a year of study at Wellington University, Rutherford was sent to a fellowship at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, England. Under the guidance of Thomson, after a short time, Rutherford made great strides. Besides focusing on the study of atomic nuclei, i.e. positive ions, velocity and 'life expectancy' of them, Rutherford also invented an electromagnetic wave detector after observing the performance of a coil. from.

By 1896, after the invention of radioactivity by the scientist Henri Becquerel, was convinced by this phenomenon, like the scientist couple Marie Curie, Rutherford went on to research. After a period of observation, he discovered that radioactive substances emitted radiations of different nature: Alpha beams were matched by heavy positive particles and beta beams matched by electrons. He also discovered another third beam but did not conclude what it was. Later, Paul Villard called it a gammar beam . It can be said that these are major discoveries, placing a very important mark on the future of nuclear science.

Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)

In 1898, after successfully defending his doctoral dissertation on material construction 'Ionization and radioactive properties' , Rutherford left the Cavendish lab to work at Macgill University, Canada, in position professor. Here, he continued his research work and discovered the link between the radioactive line of uranium and Thorium. He also proved that alpha particles are Helium atomic nuclei.

In 1907, Rutherford returned to England to teach and study at the Manchester University Institute. With the help of young physicists Geiger and Niels Bohr, Rutherford performed an atomic bombardment experiment in a thin piece of aluminum with alpha particles. He found that every 10,000 alpha particles that were shot in had a deflected particle bouncing back because of the positive electricity in it. That has shown that the structure inside each atom is mostly empty. He described this result in a visual way: This is like shooting a paper and seeing some bullets flying back.

After asking the physicist Fowler to calculate, Rutherford found a famous formula for scattering alpha particles (also called natural radiation) and concluded that: The electricity is positive in the nucleus with only one diameter. tens of thousands of atomic diameters. From this result, Rutherford proposed an atomic planet model to describe atoms, and in 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for these important findings.

One of Rutherford's two most important works was demonstrated in 1911 by the atomic model, with the nucleus in the middle and the surrounding electrons. He explained the experimental results with the assumption that the atom contained a tiny positive charge nucleus in the core, with other negatively charged electrons moving around it in different orbits, in the middle. are spaces.

Meanwhile, the alpha particle is located outside the unbearable Coulomb atom, but when it is near the positive charged nucleus in the core, it is pushed by the nucleus and alpha particles are positively charged. Because Coulomb forces are inversely proportional to the square of the distance, the nucleus needs to be small in size to achieve great repulsion at small distances between the alpha particle and the nucleus. Symbolically, the small core kernel model is a hard shield for alpha particles.

Thanks to important findings and significant contributions to British science, Rutherford was knighted in 1914. In 1919, he was appointed Director of Cavendish Laboratory, replacing Thomson. During his time here, Rutherford discovered protons in the atomic nucleus . This is his second important work.

Rutherford's contributions were highly appreciated by the scientific community. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he was awarded many other titles such as the Rumford Medal (1905) and the Copley Medal (1922) of the Royal Society, the Bressa Prize (1910) of the Academy of Sciences. Turin, Medal Albert (1928) of the Royal Society of Art, Faraday Medal (1930) of the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He was also elected honorary academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Federal Academy of Sciences).

After 18 years of passion for research and work at Cavendish Laboratories, on October 19, 1937, Rutherford permanently passed away, enjoying the age of 66 years. He has left many important studies and great inventions that are meaningful for both today and tomorrow.