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As the
father of nuclear
physics, Ernest
Rutherford is credited with splitting
the atom in 1917. His team in England bombarded nitrogen with naturally
occurring alpha particles from radioactive material and observed a proton
emitted with energy higher than the alpha particle. In 1932 two of his
students John
Cockcroft and Ernest
Walton, working under Rutherford's direction, attempted to split the atomic
nucleus by entirely artificial means, using a particle accelerator to
bombard lithium with
protons, thereby producing two helium nuclei.
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