In the history of atomic science, the figure of Ernest Rutherford towers like a mighty giant. No one else has equalled his record of major discoveries about the atom and radioactivity. 

One of twelve children of a New Zealand family, educated in his native land and at Cambridge University in England, Ernest Rutherford was a constant source of amazement to his teachers. He was lightening quick to grasp the most complex problems in physics—but this, to him, was only a beginning. Always, he went beyond, into the unknown, bent on creative research.

In 1897, when he was twenty-six, he helped the eminent English physicist, J. J. Thomson, in discovering that the electron is present in all atoms. In exploring the nature of radioactivity, he quickly proved the existence of alpha and beta rays and was co-discoverer of gamma rays. With Frederick Soddy he prepared the Theory of Atomic Disintegration, which showed that radioactive atoms change into atoms of another element. He proved that the atom is mostly empty space with a minute positively charged nucleus in the center, and he presented the first experimental proof of a man-made transmutation of one element into another.

In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The British Crown knighted him for his services to science, granted him the distinguished Order of Merit and later made him a Peer of New Zealand with the title of Baron Rutherford of Nelson.

From the dust jacket