Difference between revisions of "Ernest Rutherford"

Revision as of 02:48, November 4, 2010

Ernest Rutherford (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a Nobel Prize winning physicist, who earned fame for the following discoveries:

He explained the perplexing problem of radioactivity as the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (they were not necessarily stable entities as had been assumed since the time of the ancient Greeks);
He determined the structure of the atom and showed that the positive charges of an atom are concentrated in its center. This disproved the Plum Pudding model of the atom; and
He was the first person to successfully split the atom, whilst working in Manchester, UK in 1917.^[1]

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 '''Ernest Rutherford''' (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a [[Nobel Prize]] winning physicist, who earned fame for the following discoveries:
-* He explained the perplexing problem of radioactivity as the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (they were not necessarily stable entities as had been assumed since the time of the ancient Greeks),
+* He explained the perplexing problem of radioactivity as the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (they were not necessarily stable entities as had been assumed since the time of the ancient Greeks);
-*He determined the structure of the atom and showed that the positive charges of an atom are concentrated in its center.  This disproved the [[Plum Pudding]] model of the atom.
+*He determined the structure of the atom and showed that the positive charges of an atom are concentrated in its center.  This disproved the [[Plum Pudding]] model of the atom; and
 *He was the first person to successfully split the atom, whilst working in Manchester, UK in 1917.<ref>http://www.rutherford.org.nz/biography.htm</ref>