Ernest Rutherford

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) was born in New Zealand and conducted pioneering research at McGill University, Manchester, and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. He classified radioactive emissions into alpha and beta rays and proved that radioactivity involves elemental transmutation, winning the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In 1911, interpreting the gold foil experiment of Geiger and Marsden, Rutherford deduced that the mass and positive charge of an atom reside in a tiny, dense core—discovering the atomic nucleus. In 1917, Rutherford achieved the first artificial nuclear transmutation by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles, converting it to oxygen and identifying the proton. Element 104 was named rutherfordium in his honor.