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Born in Brightwater, New Zealand
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In 1876 the Rutherford family moved to Foxhill, and Ernest was given his first science book at the school there, when he was 10 years old.
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Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mounta
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In 1877, while at school in Havelock, Rutherford won a scholarship to Nelson College.
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1878 Feb 11th - 1st US bicycle club, Boston Bicycle Club, forms
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1879 Feb 10th - 1st electric arc light used (California Theater)
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Building of Panama Canal, begins
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Kansas becomes 1st state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages
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1st district lit by electricity
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1st telephone call between NY & Chicago
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Dow Jones published it's 1st stock avg
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1885 Jan 4th - Dr William W Grant of Iowa, performs 1st appendectomy
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Apache Chief Geronimo surrenders ending last major US-Indian war
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Oregon becomes 1st US state to make Labor Day a holiday
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Philip Pratt unveils 1st electric automobile
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1st 100 yard dash under 10 seconds (John Owens)
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Thomas Edison patents motion picture camra
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1st basketball game played
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1st movie close-up (of a sneeze), Edison studio, West Orange, NJ
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Labor Day established as a federal employees holiday
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was a student at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge
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Cuban war for independence begins
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1st X-ray photo in US
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1st football game between black colleges - Atlanta U 10, Tuskegee 0
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Spanish-American War begins
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Cuba liberated from Spain by US
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In 1900 he married Mary Georgina Newton
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They collaborated on research into the transmutation to elements.
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Their only child, Eileen, was born in 1901.
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Won the Rumford Medal
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In 1907 to become Langworthy Professor of Physics in the University of Manchester
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In 1909, two researchers in Ernest Rutherford's laboratory at the University of Manchester, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, fired a beam of alpha particles at a thin metal foil. Alpha particles had been identified and named (they were called "alpha rays" to begin with) a decade earlier by Rutherford, as one of the types of radiation given off by radioactive elements such as uranium. Being fast-moving and positively charged (they're now known to be high-speed helium nuclei), Rutherford reasoned t
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Won the Elliott Cresson Medal
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Theorized that atoms have thier positive charge concentrated in very small nucleus.
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Won the Matteucci Medal
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He was knighted in 1914
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In 1916 he was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal
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He is widely credited with first "splitting the atom" in 1917
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Won the Copley Medal
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Won the Franklin Medal
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Rutherford's theory of neutrons was proved in 1932 by his associate James Chadwick, who recognized neutrons immediately when they were produced by other scientists and later himself, in bombarding beryllium with alpha particles. In 1935, Chadwick was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery
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He proved existence of the nucleus and that it is made up of protons and neutrons
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Died in Cambridge, England & His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just west of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb and by that of Lord Kelvin.
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The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.
