May 27, 1897 – Birth of John Douglas Cockroft, Nobel Prize for achieving the disintegration of the atomic nucleus

He studied mathematics and engineering, specializing in electricity, at the University of Manchester. He later enrolled at Saint John's College, University of Cambridge, where he was first a student and later a disciple and collaborator of the great scientist Ernest Rutherford.

Shortly after, he began to investigate, in collaboration with the physicist Ernest Walton, the effects of the acceleration of protons subjected to high voltages and, in 1929, they built the first particle accelerator, known as the "Cockroft-Walton generator".

In 1932, with the same accelerator, they managed to discover the actions of protons on lithium and boron. A year later, in the case of lithium, some of these atoms absorbed a proton and disintegrated into two helium atoms, becoming the first to disintegrate an atomic nucleus with artificially accelerated subatomic particles.

In 1938, they awarded him the Hughes Medal together with Ernest Walton, for their discovery of the disintegration of atoms, and, in 1951, they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the same reason.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: John Douglas Crockroft