Rutherford’s first researches, in New Zealand, were concerned with the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations, and his thesis was entitled Magnetization of Iron by High-Frequency Discharges. Government, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Professor of Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London and Director of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge. He also became Chairman of the Advisory Council, H.M. Rutherford returned to England in 1907 to become Langworthy Professor of Physics in the University of Manchester, succeeding Sir Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he accepted an invitation to succeed Sir Joseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. An opportunity came when the Macdonald Chair of Physics at McGill University, Montreal, became vacant, and in 1898 he left for Canada to take up the post. Research Degree and the Coutts-Trotter Studentship of Trinity College. That same year, 1894, he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship, enabling him to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. in 1893 with a double first in Mathematics and Physical Science and he continued with research work at the College for a short time, receiving the B.Sc. In 1889 he was awarded a University scholarship and he proceeded to the University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he entered Canterbury College *. His mother, née Martha Thompson, was an English schoolteacher, who, with her widowed mother, also went to live there in 1855.Įrnest received his early education in Government schools and at the age of 16 entered Nelson Collegiate School.

His father James Rutherford, a Scottish wheelwright, immigrated to New Zealand with Ernest’s grandfather and the whole family in 1842.

Share via Email: Ernest Rutherford – Biographical Share this content via EmailĮ rnest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters.

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Rutherford atom