Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford

Rutherford’s discoveries led to the highly surprising conclusion, that a chemical element, in conflict with every other theory hitherto advanced, is capable of being transformed into other elements, and thus in a certain way it may be said that the progress of investigation is bringing us back once more to the transmutation theory propounded and upheld by the alchemists of old.

From the Nobel Prize presentation speech given by Professor KB Hasselberg, President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, on 10 December 1908. 

Ernest Rutherford was the first New Zealand scientist to win a Nobel Prize, and was immortalised by the element rutherfordium (element 104), being in his honour.

After attending Nelson College, where he was head boy and dux, Rutherford won a scholarship to Canterbury University College where he graduated MA in mathematics and physical science in 1894. He then enrolled in a BSc in chemistry and geology. As well as passing his BSc exams, Rutherford published two articles on the high-frequency magnetization of iron in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. He also submitted the articles as an application for an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, which provided outstanding postgraduate students with £150 per year to conduct original research in a field of importance to their national industries. When James Maclaurin turned down the one scholarship available to a New Zealander that year, it was offered to Rutherford. A few weeks later he was on the steamer Wakatipu bound for England.

Rutherford began his studies at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1895, under Professor JJ Thomson, and briefly held the record for long-distance telegraphy. In 1897, however, Thomson’s discovery of the electron, alongside the sensational discoveries of x-rays and radioactivity, revealed there was a subatomic world. Rutherford was inspired by the new science and began studying the radiations emitted by uranium and thorium, in the process discovering what he named alpha and beta radiation.

In 1898, Rutherford was appointed professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal. Working with chemist Frederick Soddy, he discovered that in the process of emitting radiation, an element is spontaneously transformed, either into another element, or into an isotope of the first element, with each radioactive element having a distinct ‘half-life’ – the time it takes for half the atoms of the original sample to decay into a new element or an isotope.

Rutherford continued to investigate the nature of radiation, demonstrating that beta radiation was a stream of negatively charged electrons and that alpha radiation consisted of positively charged helium atoms. In 1907, he became professor of physics at Manchester University and the next year was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, for his ‘investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances’.

In 1911, Rutherford proposed a new theory for the structure of the atom, with a centralised concentration of mass and positive charge – the nucleus – surrounded by empty space and a sea of orbiting negatively charged electrons.

Rutherford returned to the Cavendish Laboratory in 1919, this time as director. While bombarding nitrogen atoms with alpha particles, he found the nitrogen atoms were converted to oxygen. Rutherford had ‘split the atom’. He remained at the Cavendish until his death in 1937, mentoring and inspiring a generation of talented physicists, many of whom went on to win their own Nobel Prizes.  

By Ernest Rutherford

Medals and awards

Nobel Prize in chemistry 1908, Knighted 1914, Order of Merit 1925, Elevated to the peerage 1931

Further reading

Ernest Rutherford biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Rutherford's articles on the high-frequency magnetisation of iron, published in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, are available online:

Ernest Rutherford articles – Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand website

John Campbell, Rutherford: scientist supreme, AAS Publications, 1999

Permission of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image

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