:r:~,. - Quia · 2020. 10. 8. · l'Ernest Rutherford was born onAugust 30, 1871, in Nelson,\I New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters.

Classwork: Think about words that you believe you will find in the reading. Yourteacher will write them on the board. ~ .• ~¡-{

Biography - Ernest Rutherford ifI'- ~~~ -:: :r:~,.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908 \

l' \Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, INew Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family ofseven sons and five daughters. His father James Rutherforjl, aScottish wheelwright, emigrated to New Zealand with E;r~st'sgrandfather and the whole fami1y in 1842. His mother,Gi~~,Martha Thompson, was an English schoolteacher, who, withher widowed mother, also went to live there in 1855.

~rnest received his early education in Government schools andat the age of 16 entered Nelson Collegiate School. In 1889 hewas awarded a University scholarship and he proceeded to theUniversity ofNew Zealand, Wellington, where he enteredCanterbury College ", Re graduated M.A. in 1893 with a

double first in Mathematics and Physical Science and he continued wíth research workat the College for a short time, receiving the B.Sc. degree the following year. Thatsame year, 1894, he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Sc' larshi enablinghim to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, s a research student at the CavendishLaboratory under J.J. Thomson. In 1897 e was awarded the B.A. Research Degreeand the Cou~·Trotter Studentship of Trihity College. An opportunity came when theMacdonalcí6h;Jt ofPhysics at McGill Un~'versíty, Montreal, became vacant, and in1898 he leftror-óanada to take up the post.

rY Rutherford reLrned to England in 1907 tJ become Langworthy Professor of Physics inthe Universitl ofManchester, succeedíng Sir Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he, ¡

accepted an Uitvitation to succeed Sir -Ioseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor ofPhysics at Cambridge. Re also became C~.airman ofthe Advisory Council, R.M.Governmentl Department of Scientific aryt Industrial Research; Professor of NaturalPhilosophy, ¡Royal Institution, London; afld Director of the Royal Soeiety MondLaboratory ¡Cambridge. ./

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Before reading

Group and class discussion: Díseuss the following questions in small groups. Then,if appropriate, diseuss them with the whole class.

1. What do you know about Ernest Rutherford? Do you know why he was giventhe Nobel Príze in Chemístry in 1908?

2. What is the Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

3. Do you remember the name of another person who has won it?

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/0Rutherford's first researches, in NeJZealand, were concerned with the magnetic

properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations, and his ~ was entitledMagnetization of Iron by High-FrefJuency Discharges. He was one ofthe first to designhighly original experiments with/high-frequency, alternating currents. His secondpaper, Magnetic Viscosity, was ublished in the Transactions ofthe New ZealandI~ute (1896) and contains descri tion of a time-apparatus capable of measuringtime intervals o~n:dred-thousandt of a second.

-'-"-'---@On his arrival at Cambridge his talents were quickly recognized by Professor

Thomson. During his first spell at the Cavendish Laboratory, he invented a detectorfor electromagnetic waves, an essential feature being an ingenious magnetizing coilcontaining tiny bundle s ofmagnetized iron wire. He worked jointly with Thomson onthe behaviour ofthe ions observed in gases which had been treated with X-rays, andalso, in 1897, on the mobility ofions in relation to the strength ofthe electric field, andon related topics such as the photoelectric effect. In 1898 he reported the existence ofalpha and beta rays in uranium radiation and indicated some of their properties.

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(i) In Montreal, there were ample opportunities for research at McGill, and his work onradio active bodies, particularly on the emission of alpha rays, was continued in theMacdonald Laboratory. With R.B. Owens he studied the "emanation" of thorium anddiscovered a new noble gas, an isotope of radon, which was later to be known asthoron. Frederick Soddy arrived at McGill in 1900 from Oxford, and he collaboratedwith Rutherford in creating the "disintegration theory" ofradioactivity which regardsradioactive phenomena as atomic -not molecular- processes. The theory wassupported by a large amount of experimental evidence, a number of new radioactivesubstances were discovered and their position in the series oftransformations wasfixed. Otto Hahn, who later discovered atomic fission, worked under Rutherford at theMontreal Laboratory in 1905-06.

(JjAt Manchester, Rutherford continued his research on the properties ofthe radiumemanation and ofthe alpha rays and, in conjunction with H. Geiger, a method ofdetecting a single alpha particle and counting the number emitted from radium wasdevised. In 1910, his investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and the nature ofthe inner structure ofthe atom which caused such scattering led to the postulation ofhis concept ofthe "nucIeus", his greatest contribution to physics. According to himpractically the whole ma .atom and at the same time all positive charge oftheatom is concentrated in minute space at the centre. In 1912 Niels Bohr joined hirn atManchester and he adapte erford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantumtheory and so obtained a the ry of atomic structure which, with later improvements,mainly as a result ofHeise erg's concepts, remains valid to this day. In 1913,together with H. G. Mosele ,he used cathode rays to bombard atoms ofvariouselements and showed that the inner structures correspond with a group oflines whichcharacterize the element . Each element could then be assigned an atomic numberand, more important, th properties of each elernentcould be defined by this number.In 1919, during his last ear at Manchester, he discovered that the nuclei of certainlight elements, such a nitrogen, could be "disintegrated" by the impact of energeticalpha particles comi from some radioactive source, and that during this process fastprotons were emitt . Blackett later proved, with the cloud chamber, that the nitrogen

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in this pr?cess was actually transformed into an oxygen iSOto) sO,thatRutherfordwas the first to dehberately transmute one element into another. G. de Hevesy wasalso one ofRutherford's collaborators at Manchester. -1

® An inspiring leader ofthe Cavendish Laboratory, h¡;teeredhumerous future NobelPrize winners towards their great achievements: Cl~~atÍnackett, Cockcroft andWalton; while other laureates worked with him at the Cavendish for shorter or longerperiods: G.P. Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston. C.D. Ellis, his co-author in 1919and 1930, pointed out "that the majority of the experiments at the Cavendish werereally started by Rutherford's direct or indirect suggestion". He remained active andworking to the very end of his life.

CV Rutherford published several books:'Radioactiuity (1904); 1ladioactive ;Transformations (1906), being his Silliman Lectures at Yale University; Radiationfrom Radioactive Substances, with James Chadwick and C.D. Ellis (1919, 1930)-athoroughly documented book which serves as a chronologicallist of his many papers tolearned societies, etc.~The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926);~The Artificial .

""Transmutation of the Elements (1933); The Newer Alchemy (1937).

(@)Rutherford was knighted in 1914; he was appointed to the Order ofMerit in 1925, andin 1931 he was created First Baron Rutherford ofNelson, New Zealand, andCambridge. He was elected Fellow ofthe Royal Society in 1903 and was its Presidentfrom 1925 to 1930. Amongst his many honours, he was awarded the Rumford Medal(1905) and the Copley Medal (1922) ofthe Royal Society, the Bressa Prize (1910) oftheTurin Academy ofScience, the Albert Medal (1928) ofthe Royal Society of Arts, the.Faraday Medal 1930 ofthe Institution ofElectrical En ineers, the D.Sc. degree oftheUniversity of New Zealand, and onorary octorates from the Universities ofPennsylvania, Wisconsin, McGill, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Yale, Glasgow,Giessen, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham, Oxford, Liverpool, Toronto,Bristol, Cape Town, London and Leeds.

@ Rutherford married Mary Newton, only daughter of Arthur and Mary de RenzyNewton, in 1900. Their only child, Eileen, married the physicist R.H. Fowler.Rutherford's chief recreations were golf and motoring.

@ He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes were buried in the nave ofWestminster Abbey, just west of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb and by that of Lord Kelvin.

Taken from Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elseoier Publishing Company, Amsterdam,1966.

This biography was fírst publíshed in the book series Les Prix Nobel.It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1908

Available at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel p7'izes/ chemistry / laureates / 1908/rutherford-bio.html

* Canterbury College (now Canterbury University) was located in Christchurch, but wasadministered from the University of New Zealand, Wellington.

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Bxercises

Group work. When you finish reading the article find out:1. How many of the words on the board are in the reading?2. Which ones you don't know? Find thern in your dictionaries.

References. What do the following words in italics refer to in the text?Paragrap

11 Line Word Answer

1. 1 7-8 ... also went to live there in 1855. Ne<.v·&~~2. 2 12 ... for Canada to take up the post. M¿(L~1D1.I DA. CA6c oLrp~w~3. 5 3 ... an essential feature being an ... Cok t1tu J..te¿;(D¡I) ~ i~e-~ ¡~Ütla":J

4. 6 4 ... ,which was later to be known ... ¡S'o'\~ cf:~~... theory of atomic structure N '.z.J s &k-r l-l ~~ °f.J-o(~5. 7 9 which ... ~ S"ú:;t::r..¿-.

6. 12 2 ... and by that of Lord Kelvin. [Lo('".{ l4Lvil\'$) tomb

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Text organization. Make a timeline in which you show at least five ofthe mostimportant events in t he life of Ernest Rutherford.

After reading

Answer the following questions:

1. Why is Ernest Rutherford called ari inspiring leader ofthe CavendishLaboratory? H-e ,1 S"¡-~Gre4.iI o~ iDwá--rd.s- ~ c~ev~ (W 8)

2. How many books did Ernest Rutherford write? $" i)(... ((?9)3. How many and which prizes did Ernest Rutherford win? vVhydid he win those

prizes? Ir lctl No~ rrv~ ¡....~~ ; ".' (~te ro') ~, Activities for this text were prepared by Prof. Virna Ferrari. '> \ )C5~~ 1?-z.)