James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20th October, 1891, the
son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. He attended Manchester High
School prior to entering Manchester University in 1908; he graduated from the
Honours School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under Professor
(later Lord) Rutherford in the Physical Laboratory in Manchester, where he
worked on various radioactivity problems, gaining his M.Sc. degree in 1913 That
same year he was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and proceeded to Berlin
to work in the Physikalisch Technische Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg under
Professor H. Geiger.
During World War I, he was interned in the Zivilgefangenenlager, Ruhleben. After
the war, in 1919, he returned to England to accept the Wollaston Studentship at Gonville
and Caius College, Cambridge, and to resume work under Rutherford, who in
the meantime had moved to the Cavendish
Laboratory, Cambridge. Rutherford had succeeded that year in disintegrating
atoms by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles, with the emission of a
proton. This was the first artificial nuclear transformation. In Cambridge,
Chadwick joined Rutherford in accomplishing the transmutation of other light
elements by bombardment with alpha particles, and in making studies of the
properties and structure of atomic nuclei.
He was elected Fellow of Gonville and Caius College (1921-1935) and became
Assistant Director of Research in the Cavendish Laboratory (1923). In 1927 he
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1932, Chadwick made a fundamental discovery in the domain of nuclear science:
he proved the existence of neutrons - elementary particles devoid of any
electrical charge. In contrast with the helium nuclei (alpha rays) which are
charged, and therefore repelled by the considerable electrical forces present in
the nuclei of heavy atoms, this new tool in atomic disintegration need not
overcome any electric barrier and is capable of penetrating and splitting the
nuclei of even the heaviest elements. Chadwick in this way prepared the way
towards the fission of uranium 235 and towards the creation of the atomic bomb.
For this epoch-making discovery he was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal
Society in 1932, and subsequently the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.
He remained at Cambridge until 1935 when he was elected to the Lyon Jones Chair
of Physics in the University of Liverpool.
From 1943 to 1946 he worked in the United States as Head of the British Mission
attached to the Manhattan Project for the development of the atomic bomb. He
returned to England and, in 1948, retired from active physics and his position
at Liverpool on his election as Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
He retired from this Mastership in 1959. From 1957 to 1962 he was a parttime
member of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
Chadwick has had many papers published on the topic of radioactivity and
connected problems and, with Lord Rutherford and C. D. Ellis, he is co-author of
the book Radiations from Radioactive substances (1930).
Sir James was knighted in 1945. Apart from the Hughes Medal (Royal Society)
mentioned above, he received the Copley Medal (1950) and the Franklin Medal of
the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (1951). He
is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics and, in addition to receiving
honorary doctorate degrees from the Universities
of Reading, Dublin, Leeds,
Oxford, Birmingham,
Montreal (McGill), Liverpool, and Edinburgh,
he is a member of several foreign academies, being Associé oft he Académie
Royale de Belgique; Foreign Member of the Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes
Selskab and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen;
Corresponding Member of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Leipzig;
Member of the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum and the Franklin Institute;
Honorary Member of the American Philosophical Society and the American
Physical Society.
In 1925, he married Aileen Stewart-Brown of Liverpool. They have twin daughters,
and live at Denbigh, NorthWales. His hobbies include gardening and fishing.
Prof. Chadwick died in 1974
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