Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand physicist and chemist who earned the title “Father of Nuclear Physics” after his discoveries of radioactive half-lives, differentiated between alpha and beta radiation, and proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another. He is also the recipient of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances". Ernest Rutherford was born in Spring Grove, New Zealand to his English parents James and Martha Rutherford in August 1871. His Father was a farmer who was from Hornchurch, Essex, England and moved to New Zealand from Scotland to nurture children and flax. When Ernest was first born his name was misspelled as “Earnest”. He studied at The Havelock School and Nelson College for his high school years, and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand. He attended Canterbury College for a number of years, earning his BA, MA, and BSc, then he completed 2 years of research at the cutting edge of electricity and the study of it. He graduated with a double major of Physical Science and Mathematics and then kept on researching at the college for some time and received his B.Sc. degree later that same year. In 1894 he earned the “1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship” and this allowed him to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a spot as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory. There, he studied under J.J. Thomson, who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics “in recognition of great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases”. He then went on receive his B.A. Research Degree and the Coutts-Trotter Studentship of Trinity College. At McGill University in Montreal, Canada there is the Macdonald Chair in Physics, which is the professor position and was created in 1891. After John
Bibliography: "Ernest Rutherford - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 20 May 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1906". Nobelprize.org. 20 May 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1906/index.html