Ernest Rutherford
Awards & Honours
1
Awards Won
6
Honours
1
Rankings
2
Records
Rutherford's achievements are extraordinary. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908, a rare honor for a physicist. He was knighted in 1914 and received the Order of Merit, one of Britain's highest civilian honors. He served as President of the Royal Society from 1925 to 1930. His discovery of the atomic nucleus and the proton fundamentally changed physics. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a rare honor for a scientist, and the element rutherfordium was named after him in 1997.
Awards
Honours & Distinctions
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Awarded for his investigations into the disintegration of elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances.
Knight Bachelor
Knighted for his contributions to science.
Order of Merit
Awarded for his outstanding contributions to science.
Baron Rutherford of Nelson
Elevated to the peerage for his scientific achievements.
Element rutherfordium
The element with atomic number 104 was named in his honor.
Burial in Westminster Abbey
Interred near Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
Rankings & Lists
Greatest physicists of all time
Records & Feats
First to artificially transmute an element
In 1917, Rutherford bombarded nitrogen with alpha particles, producing oxygen and a proton, the first artificial nuclear reaction.
Discovery of the atomic nucleus
Through the gold foil experiment, Rutherford revealed that atoms have a small, dense, positively charged nucleus.