Ernest Rutherford wins the Nobel Prize
- When
- 10 December 1908
- Where
- Brightwater, Nelson · Brightwater
- Reach
- Nationwide
A farm boy from Brightwater took the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and went on to split the atom and discover the atomic nucleus.
Rutherford was educated at Nelson College and Canterbury College before a scholarship took him to Cambridge. The prize recognised his work on radioactive decay; his identification of the nucleus in 1911 and the first artificial nuclear reaction in 1917 came later. He remains the most internationally significant scientist New Zealand has produced, and appears on the hundred-dollar note.
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