1-155-986 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-born physicist and the founder of nuclear physics. Rutherford (1871-1937) won a scholarship to Cambridge, and worked at Cavendish Laboratory on X-rays and uranium radiation. He was later appointed a Professor at McGill University in Montreal followed by the post of Director of Manchester Physics Laboratory where experiments into the structure of the atom took place. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908, and in 1919 he succeeded JJ Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge.