MASTER SCIENTIST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 882, 28 January 1930, Page 9

MASTER SCIENTIST

SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD GIVEN NEW HONOUR ‘WORLD S GREAT EXPERIMENTER’ British Official Wireless RUGBY, Sunday. The council of the Institution of Electrical Engineers has made to Sir Ernest 'Rutherford the ninth award of

the Faraday Medal fof conspicuous services rendered in the advancement of electrical science. Sir Ernest has been described as Britain’s master scientist. He has solved secrets of electricity and radio activity and is said to be the greatest experimenter in the world. Sir Ernest Rutherford is a native of Nelson, New Zealand. He was educated at Nelson College and Canterbury College, Christchurch. After graduating (M.A. and B.Sc.)' at the University of New Zealand, he went with a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. In the Cavendish Laboratory there under Sir J. J. Thomson he began the career of research which has had such important results. His early work was done in connection with the conduction of electricity through gases and won him the B.A. research degree and the CouttsTrotter scholarship in 1897. In the following year he was appointed Macdonald professor of physics at McGill University, Montreal. It was there that he carried out in conjunction with Soddy the researches which established the nature of radio-active transformations. Fleeted a Fellow the Royal Society in 1903 he succeeded Sir A. Schuster in 1907 as Langworthy professor of physics at Manchester University, attracting a large number of students interested in the investigation of radioactivity. With the aid of some of these this branch of science was rapidly developed. The distinguished New Zealander was knighted in 1914 and in 1919 he succeeded Sir J. J. Thomson as Cavendish professor of experimental physics at Cambridge and professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution. He received an enormous number of honorary degrees and other distinctions at Home and abroad. These included the Rumford medal of the Royal Society, the Barnard medal, the Bressa prize, the Copley medal (1922). the Franklin medal (1924), the Albert medal (Royal Society of Arts), 1928. 3n 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize, and in 1925 the Order of Merit. He was president of the British Association in 1923 and of the Royal Society in 1923. His writings include works on ra.dio-activity and numerous papers in the Royal Society’s "Transactions” and in other scientific journals.