James Chadwick

Also known as Sir James Chadwick

English physicist (1891-1974), who discovered the neutron in 1932

OverviewAI-generated

James Chadwick was a British nuclear physicist, university teacher, and physicist born in Bollington in 1891. He served as a participant in the Manhattan Project and fought in World War I. His academic background includes degrees from the University of Manchester, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, and Victoria University of Manchester. He worked at the University of Manchester, University of Liverpool, and Victoria University of Manchester. His doctoral advisor was Ernest Rutherford.

Chadwick received the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Copley Medal, the Hughes Medal, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a member of the Royal Society, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His field of work included physics, neutrons, nuclear bombs, and radioactivity. He died in Cambridge in 1974.

Synthesized by Vinony from 28 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics1935
“for the discovery of the neutron”

NobelPrize.org →

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: James
Gender: male
Citizenship: United Kingdom
Place of birth: Bollington
Place of death: Cambridge
Occupation: physicist
Educated at: Victoria University of Manchester
Employer: Victoria University of Manchester
Languages spoken: English language
Award: Royal Society Bakerian Medal
Participant in: Manhattan Project
Academic degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Doctoral advisor: Ernest Rutherford
Field of work: radioactivity
Conflict: World War I
Image: James Chadwick.jpg

Show 12 more facts

Commons category: James Chadwick
member of: American Physical Society
date of birth: 1891-01-01
date of death: 1974-01-01
Erdős number: 5
nominated for: Nobel Prize in Physics
name in native language: James Chadwick
different from: James Read Chadwick
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
honorific prefix: Sir
interested in: physics

Sources (6)

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Encyclopedic overview

Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was a British experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in nuclear physics.

Chadwick graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester in 1911, where he studied under Ernest Rutherford (known as the "father of nuclear physics"). At Manchester, he continued to study under Rutherford until he was awarded his MSc in 1913. The same year, Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. He elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger in Berlin. Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, Chadwick was able to demonstrate that beta radiation produced a continuous spectrum, and not discrete lines as had been thought. Still in Germany when World War I broke out in Europe, he spent the next four years in the Ruhleben internment camp.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “James Chadwick” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.