James Chadwick

James Chadwick most recognized for his discovery of the neutron was born in Cheshire, England, on October 20th, 1891, the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. As a child he had always been interested by physics he attended Manchester High School prior to entering Manchester University he graduated from the Honours School of Physics and spent the next two years under Professor Rutherford in the Physical Laboratory in Manchester where he worked on various problems concerning radioactivity, gaining his M.Sc. That same year he was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and proceeded to Berlin to work in the Physikalisch Technische Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg under Professor H. Geiger.
He was elected Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and became Assistant Director of Research in the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1927 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society which was a large social achievement.
During World War I, he was interned in the Zivilgefangenenlager, Ruhleben. After the war in 1919 he returned to England to accept the Wollaston Studentship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and to resume work under Rutherford, who in the meantime had moved to the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. Rutherford had succeeded that year in disintegrating atoms by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles, with the emission of a proton. This was the first artificial nuclear transformation. In Cambridge, Chadwick joined Rutherford in accomplishing the transmutation of other light elements by bombardment with alpha particles, and in making studies of the properties and structure of atomic nuclei.
In 1932 James Chadwick made a ground breaking discovery by proving the existence of neutrons, particles devoid of any electrical charge. In contrast with the alpha rays which are charged, and therefore repelled by the considerable electrical forces present in the nuclei of heavy atoms, this new tool in atomic disintegration need not overcome any electric barrier and...