Ernest Rutherford Inventor of Orbital Theory

Biography of Ernest Rutherford

Early Life

Ernest Rutherford inventor of Orbital Theory proposer was born in New Zealand in 1871 on 30 August. His father James Rutherford was a farmer by profession and he was fourth child of his parents. His mother Martha Thompson was an English teacher. He got his early education from a government school and after his early education he won a scholarship and went to Nelson school. Moving further he was granted another scholarship of university level which he got from University of Canterbury. He earned his B.A degree in year of 1893 and M.A in 1894. His fields of formal study were mathematics and physics. He got third and most important scholarship of his life from University of Cambridge where he joined a professor J.J. Thompson as a research student.

Achievements

He started his career as chairman of department of physics in McGill University which is situated in Montreal. After that, his interest in practical work of chemistry raised and he started to conduct researches and experiments. In the duration of next three years, Ernest Rutherford conducted many researches and as a result found a total new field of chemistry which is Radioactivity. Once, while performing an experiment in a university he made a discovery of detector for electromagnetic waves and this thing suddenly mad e him one of the most important scientists of chemistry of the time.

Contributions

Ernest Rutherford’s contributions to chemistry are not just limited to radioactivity and in fact he has contributed tremendously in other branches of chemistry also. He worked with Professor Thompson and worked for behavior of gaseous ions. He observed that the behavior and movements of gaseous ions is changed by electric effect which he called as photoelectric effect. His work about radioactivity includes two distinct types of theories which he proposed while an experiments on two elements thorium and actinium. In 1902, he proposed this theory of radioactivity that the radioactive behavior of some elements is due to their radioactive nature.

Inventor of Orbital Theory

Ernest Rutherford is much famous for his valuable and well known orbital theory which is about atom. He proposed this theory in dispersion of atom while conducting his famous and remarkable gold foil experiment. He is known as the father of radioactivity and nuclear physics as he found important details about the radioactive nature of elements. He was awarded the Noble Prize of chemistry for his influential and remarkable work in this subject.

Death

Ernest Rutherford faced some normal diseases for a short span of time and as a result this great scientist died in year of 1937 on 19 October in Cambridge in the age of 66 years.