Chadwick, Sir James

▪ British physicist

born Oct. 20, 1891, Manchester, Eng.

died July 24, 1974, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

      English physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935 for the discovery of the neutron.

      Educated at the universities of Manchester and Cambridge, Chadwick also studied under Hans Geiger at the Technische Hochschule, Berlin. From 1923 he worked with Ernest Rutherford in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, where they studied the transmutation of elements by bombarding them with alpha particles and investigated the nature of the atomic nucleus, identifying the proton, the nucleus of the hydrogen atom, as a constituent of the nuclei of other atoms.

      In 1932 Chadwick observed that beryllium, when exposed to bombardment by alpha particles, released an unknown radiation that in turn ejected protons from the nuclei of various substances. Chadwick interpreted this radiation as being composed of particles of mass approximately equal to that of the proton, but without electrical charge—neutrons.

      This discovery provided a new tool for inducing atomic disintegration, since neutrons, being electrically uncharged, could penetrate undeflected into the atomic nucleus. Chadwick was knighted in 1945.

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