Ernest Rutherford, Baron Rutherford

Sitter in 16 portraits
Physicist. Born near Nelson, New Zealand, he won an 1851 Scholarship to Cambridge, and made the first successful radio transmissions over two miles. Teaching at McGill University (1898-1907) he discovered that radioactive elements transform into other elements, publishing Radioactivity (1903), and winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. At Manchester (1907-19) he discovered the atomic nucleus and the artificial transformation of the elements. During the First World War he worked on submarine detection. As director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge (1919-37), Rutherford supervised experiments that led to the discovery of the neutron, by his colleague Chadwick, in 1932.