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James Chadwick
Life Details
Born: 20th October, 1891. Died: 24th July, 1974.
Introduction
James Chadwick was an English physicist who won a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the neutron.
Early Life
Born to John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles, James lived in Manchester during his formative years. He was educated at the University of Manchester, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford, and earned a Master's degree in 1913.
World War I
When World War I broke out in 1914, Chadwick was studying in the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He was imprisoned in a camp for civilians at Ruhleben, but he still managed to get some scientific work completed. When the war ended, he returned to England to study at the University of Cambridge. In 1921 he received a doctorate, and in 1923 he was appointed assistant director of reearch at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
Rutherford & Chadwick
Working with Ernest Rutherford, and blasting elements with alpha particles, they identified the proton. After finding this, they surmised that there must be other components to the atom. A couple of French physicists, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie bombarded beryllium with alpha particles. They figured that there was an unknown radiation released. Chadwick wasn't convinced with their findings that labelled the radiation as gamma rays.
Chadwick carried out his own experiments, and his findings were that radiation being composed of particles of mass approximately equal to that of the proton, but without electrical charge - neutral. Chadwick had discovered neutrons. This led to a new model of the atomic nucleus being composed of both protons and neutrons.
MAUD Committee
At the outbreak of World War II, Chadwick was selected to be part of the MAUD Committee, to assess the feasibility of the atomic bomb. Upon the realisation that only a small amount of uranium was needed to make an atomic bomb, Chadwick proposed "that a nuclear bomb was not only possible, it was inevitable" I had then to take sleeping pills. It was the only remedy."
The American bomb program took this advice, and set upon creating their own atomic device. Chadwick was head of the British division to the Manhattan Project, which started in 1943. Two atomic devices were dropped over Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which literally floored the two cities, and ended the last oppressors of World War Two.
Later Life
Chadwick was knighted in 1945, and returned to Britain in 1946. His work was noted as being substantial, and he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1950. He then retired in 1958.
James Chadwick died in 1974.
