Ernest+Rutherford-1903

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871 in Spring Grove, New Zealand. He lived to be 66 when he died on October 19, 1937. He won the Nobel Prize in 1908 for his model of the atom. He discovered that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. He is also widely credited as splitting the atom in 1917 and leading the first experiment to "split the nucleus" in a controlled manner. During the investigation of radioactivity he coined the terms alpha and beta in 1899 to describe the two distinct types of radiation emitted by thorium and uranium. Rutherford also has an element named after him, rutherfordium.

Not only did Rutherford create the model for the atom, he aslo discovered that a sample of radioactive material invariably took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay. This is known as its half-life. This information was used to determine the age of the Earth. In 1903, Rutherford realized that a type of radiation from radium must represent something different from alpha rays and beta rays, due to its much greater power. This type of radiation is known as gamma rays. Today, gamma rays are used as a way to harness a great amount of energy.

Rutherford's widely known model of the atom