Ernest Walton, Nobel Prize for the transmutation of atomic nuclei

October 6, 1903, Abbeyside (Ireland) – June 25, 1995, Belfast (United Kingdom)

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, from a Methodist family, graduated from Belfast Methodist College in 1922 and from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1927.

Between 1927 and 1934 he devoted himself to the investigation of nuclear physics under the direction of Ernest Rutherford, at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and received his doctorate in 1931.

His early research included theoretical and experimental studies in hydrodynamics and indirect methods for producing fast particles, working in the linear accelerator and what would later be known as the betatron.

He collaborated with John Cockroft in constructing one of the first atom smashers that demonstrated that the bombardment of fast protons could disintegrate various light elements. Thus, both were directly responsible for the decay of a nucleus of a lithium atom by accelerating proton bombardment and identifying the products as helium nuclei.

In 1934, he became a professor at Trinity College, and, four years later, he shared the Hughes Medal with Cockroft, awarded by the prestigious Royal Society of London, for his discovery that nuclei can be disintegrated by artificially produced particles that they bombard.

Between 1946 and 1974, he held the Erasmus Smith Professorship of Natural and Experimental Philosophy.

In 1951, Cockroft also shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated particles, which paved the way for the construction of large cyclotrons.