James+Chadwick-1932



James Chadwick was born on October 20, 1891 in Bollington, Cheshire. He lived to the age of 83 when he died on July 24, 1974. He studied at the University of Manchester and Cambridge and also worked with Hans Geiger and Ernsest Rutherford at the Technical University of Berlin. Chadwick lived through the first World War and spend a large portion of his time trying to ionize phosphorus and the phot-chemical reaction of carbon monoxide and magnesium. In 1932, Chadwick discovered a previously unknown part of the atomic nucleus, the neutron. He found that the neutron had no charge. During Chadwick's life it was believed that much of the atom was already known. To discover a new part of the atom was revolutionary and quite useful to today's society.

What the discovery of the neutron did was give way to forming elements heavier than uranium in a laboratory. This discovery inspired other physicist, such as Enrico Fermi and Otto Hahn to the discovery of nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is the splitting of the nucleus of an atom that releases large amounts of energy that were use today in nuclear power plants.