Ernest Rutherford Contribution To Science

Ernest Rutherford was born August 30, 1871 in Brightwater, New Zealand. He came from a big family, him being the fourth of twelve children; his father was a farmer and struggled to maintain his large family, meanwhile his mother was an English school teacher who believed that her children's education was important. In 1887, Ernest was given a scholarship to attend Nelson Collegiate School, and later was awarded another scholarship in 1890 to attend Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 1900, Ernest married Mary Newton; the couple had their first and only child, which they named Eileen. During his years at Canterbury, Rutherford earned a bachelor's and master's degree in Arts, his professors fueled his passion for scientific experimentations

Ernest’s contributions include: the invention of the early detector of radios waves, discovered the principle of half-life and that atoms were indestructible, etc. In an article called “Ernest 10 Major Contributions to Science” by Anirudh it states that “Rutherford discovered that every atom contains a nucleus where its positive charge, and most of its mass, is concentrated. His model of the atom thus contained the new feature of a relatively high central charge concentrated in a small volume of the atom and responsible for most of its mass.” With the help of the gold foil excitements he was able to figure out that an atom had a nucleus with a mass and a positive charge. Anirudh’s article also states that, “In 1917, Ernest Rutherford became the first person to deliberately transform one element into another.” He was able to to create the first nuclear reaction by converting nitrogen atoms into oxygen atoms with the help of alpha radiation. This helped prove his theory of the proton’s existence because when the alpha radiation occurred it turned the old element into a new element by removing two protons. Lastly the article also mentions that, “In 1898, Ernest Rutherford began studying the radiation emitted by uranium. His experiments led him to conclude that radioactivity must have at least two components; and he named them alpha and beta rays after the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.” The research he conducted lead him to realized that beta rays were way more penetrating than alpha