Join us for the Rutherford Centennial Talk

Join the College of Sciences next Thursday, September 29 at 6 p.m. for the Rutherford Centennial Talk, which celebrates the centenary of the publication of Rutherford’s paper describing the discovery of the atomic nucleus. The event will be held in the Engineering II Building, Room 102.

Tristan Hubsch, from Howard University, will be the guest speaker. The abstract for the speech is below.

A century ago, a remarkable discovery was made by means of an an essentially table-top experiment: Atoms, named so for having been thought to be indivisible, were shown to be mostly void!

On one hand, this led to the planetary model of the atom, the analysis of which led to the development of quantum mechanics. In turn, this experiment of bombarding a thin gold foil with alpha-particles established the basic paradigm for most of the epochal experiments of the 20th century, culminating with multi-national/cultural/political/budget institutions such as CERN, and changed experimentation into a world-wide global endeavor. A century later, this epoch-making experimental paradigm may seem to be running out of steam, but certainly not without leaving an unprecedented legacy.