Ernest Walton - Wikipedia

Thank you my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that October 6 is the anniversary of the birth of Irish physicist Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton who 'split the atom' with John Cockcroft at Cambridge University in the early 1930s.

How they 'split the atom' - Prof Philip Walton
"An event to mark the 80th anniversary of Ernest Walton's (left) and John Cockcroft's 'splitting the atom' on 14th April 1932 hosted by Celsius"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjmncP_n10c

Images:
1. Ernest Walton.
2. James Chadwick and Ernest Rutherford - the Idea hive.
3. The 150,000 volt proton accelerator used by Doctors John Cockcroft (1897 - 1967) and Ernest Walton in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.

Biographies
1. nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1951/walton/biographical/
2. scihi.org/ernest-walton-and-the-particle-accelerator/

1. Background from nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1951/walton/biographical/
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1951 John Cockcroft and Ernest T.S. Walton
Ernest T.S. Walton
Biographical
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was born at Dungarvan, County Waterford on the south coast of Ireland on October 6th, 1903, the son of a Methodist Minister from County Tipperary. The ministry demanded that his father move from place to place every few years, and he attended day schools in Banbridge (County Down) and Cookstown (County Tyrone). In 1915 he was sent as a boarder to the Methodist College, Belfast, where he excelled in mathematics and science, and in 1922 he entered Trinity College, Dublin , on a scholarship. He read the honours courses in both mathematics and experimental science, specializing in physics, and graduated in 1926 with firstclass honours in both subjects; he received his M.Sc. degree in 1927.
In 1927, he was awarded a Research Scholarship by the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 and he went to Cambridge University to work in the Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford. He continued at Cambridge after receiving a senior research award of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1930, and received his Ph.D. in 1931. Walton was Clerk Maxwell Scholar from 1932 to 1934 when he returned to Trinity College, Dublin, as Fellow: he was appointed Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in 1946, and in 1960 he was elected Senior Fellow of Trinity College.
Prof. Walton’s first researches involved theoretical and experimental studies in hydrodynamics and, at the Cavendish Laboratory, he worked on indirect methods for producing fast particles, working on the linear accelerator and on what was later to become known as the betatron. He followed this with work on the direct method of producing fast particles by the use of high voltages this work being done jointly with J.D. Cokcroft. A suitable apparatus was built which made it possible to show that various light elements could be disintegrated by bombardment with fast protons. They were directly responsible for disintegrating the nucleus of the lithium atom by bombardment with accelerated protons, and for identifying the products as helium nuclei.
Prof. Walton has taken part in many activities outside his academic work, and he has served on committees connected with the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, the Royal City of Dublin Hospital, the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Dublin Society, Wesley College, Dublin, and many government and church committees. He has had numerous scientific papers published in the journals of learned societies, particularly on the subjects of hydrodynamics, nuclear physics, and microwaves.
He was awarded the Hughes Medal, jointly with Sir John Cockcroft, by the Royal Society of London in 1938, and in 1959 he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Queen’s University, Belfast.
E.T.S. Walton married Freda Wilson, daughter of a Methodist Minister and a former pupil of Methodist College, Belfast, in 1934. They have two sons and two daughters, Alan, Marian, Philip, and Jean.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Ernest T.S. Walton died on June 25, 1995."

2. Background from scihi.org/ernest-walton-and-the-particle-accelerator/
"Ernest Walton and the Particle Accelerator
On October 6, 1903, Irish physicist and Nobel laureate Ernest Walton was born. Walton received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work together with John Cockcroft with “atom-smashing” experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, and so became the first person in history to artificially split the atom.

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was born in Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford to a Methodist minister father, Rev John Walton and Anna Sinton. He attended day schools in counties Down and Tyrone, and at Wesley College Dublin before becoming a boarder at Methodist College Belfast. In 1922 Walton won scholarships to Trinity College, Dublin for the study of mathematics and science. He was awarded bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Trinity in 1926 and 1927, respectively.

Following graduation he was awarded a Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and was accepted as a research student at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford, Director of Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. At the time there were four Nobel Prize laureates on the staff at the Cavendish lab and a further five were to emerge. Already in 1928 Walton attempted two methods of high-energy particle acceleration. Both failed, mainly because the available power sources could not generate the necessary energies, but his methods were later developed and used in the betatron and the linear accelerator.[3] Walton was awarded his PhD in 1931 and remained at Cambridge as a researcher until 1934.

During the early 1930s Walton and John Cockcroft collaborated to build an apparatus that split the nuclei of lithium atoms by bombarding them with a stream of protons accelerated inside a high-voltage tube (700 kilovolts). In difference to Walton, John Cockcroft was a theoretician. Together they were a perfect team. Cockcroft proved it could be done, and Walton then went and did it.[4] The splitting of the lithium nuclei produced helium nuclei. This was experimental verification of theories about atomic structure that had been proposed earlier by Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, and others. The successful apparatus – a type of particle accelerator now called the Cockcroft-Walton generator – helped to usher in an era of particle-accelerator-based experimental nuclear physics. The original apparatus is on view in the Science Museum in South Kensington in London and there is a replica in the Smithsonian in Washington DC.[2]

It was this research at Cambridge in the early 1930s that won Walton and Cockcroft the Nobel Prize in physics in 1951 for their “work on the transmutation of the atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles“. Walton and Cockcroft also received the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1938. They had, in fact, achieved what was previously considered to be impossible. Some short time before their success, Albert Einstein had remarked that splitting the atom was indeed an impossible task: “It would be like a blind man trying to shoot ducks, firing into the air in a country where there were very few ducks.”[2] The experiment confirmed a number of predictions arising out of the theory of relativity and the new quantum mechanics, including Einstein’s own famous equation, E = mc2, where E denotes energy, m denotes mass and c is the velocity of light.[2]

Walton was Clerk Maxwell Scholar from 1932 to 1934 when he returned to Trinity College, Dublin, as Fellow: he was appointed Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in 1946, and in 1960 he was elected Senior Fellow of Trinity College. Walton’s lecturing was considered outstanding as he had the ability to present complicated matters in simple and easy-to-understand terms. His research interests were pursued with very limited resources, yet he was able to study, in the late 1950s, the phosphorescent effect in glasses, secondary-electron emissions from surfaces under positive-ion bombardment, radiocarbon dating and low-level counting, and the deposition of thin films on glass.

Walton retired from Trinity College Dublin in 1974 and died in Belfast on 25 June 1995, aged 91."

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A great history share, thank you.

Thank you Sir