This year marks the 103rd anniversary of the birth of nuclear physics, when Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden’s experiments at the University of Manchester led them to conclude that atoms consist of tiny, positively-charged nuclei orbited by negatively-charged electrons.
This year is also the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb, dropped on Hiroshima. Though their discoveries led to the harnessing of nuclear energy as a weapon, it should not be forgotten that the purpose of Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden’s experiments, as with much of scientific research, was simply to understand nature. And in this they succeeded, handing us an understanding that has changed forever how we see the fabric of the world, and one which had led to much good, too.
Nuclear Physics, a Window on the World
So much science and technology has followed from the nuclear model of the atom. It spurred Danish physicist Niels Bohr to develop the nascent quantum theory into a fully-fledged quantum mechanics that could describe the way atoms worked. That in turn has paved the way for so much of modern technology, not the least of which of course is the silicon chip and computerisation.
