Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ernest Rutherford. He was the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world. He identified the atom’s constituent parts, discovered that elemental decay was the cause of radiation and became the first true alchemist in the history of science when he forced platinum to change into gold. He was born at the edge of the Empire in 1871, the son of Scottish immigrant farmers and was working the fields when a telegram came from the great British physicist J J Thomson asking him to come to Cambridge. Rutherford immediately laid down his spade saying “that’s the last potato I ever dig”. It was. He went on to found a science, win a Nobel Prize and pioneer the ‘big science’ of the twentieth century.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
- Simon Schaffer
25 episodes
Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge - Jim Al-Khalili
8 episodes
Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Surrey - Patricia Fara
17 episodes
Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
Related episodes
-
Radiation
12 Nov, 2009 530 Physics -
The Neutron
14 Apr, 2016 530 Physics -
Nuclear Physics
10 Jan, 2002 530 Physics -
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
29 Feb, 2024 530 Physics -
The Electron
29 Sep, 2022 530 Physics -
Paul Dirac
5 Mar, 2020 530 Physics -
Albert Einstein
14 Sep, 2023 500 Science -
Maxwell
2 Oct, 2003 530 Physics -
Crystallography
29 Nov, 2012 540 Chemistry -
Bertrand Russell
6 Dec, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy
Programme ID: p004y23q
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y23q
Auto-category: 539.7 (Atomic and nuclear physics)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello, Ernest Rutherford was the father of nuclear science, the great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the subatomic world.