Rutherford's attitude to his own discoveries is illustrated by his response to a remark of one who was present at the moment of one of his great discoveries: Rutherford, you are always on the crest of the wave. To which Rutherford responded: I made the wave, didn't I? Somehow from Rutherford's vantage point everything he said seems right, even including his remark, I do not let my boys waste their time when he was asked if he encouraged his students to study relativity! Rutherford was a happy warrior if ever there was one.
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About Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford was a 19th-century New Zealand physicist and chemist. Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, was a New Zealand physicist and chemist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nuclear physics" and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday." In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances." Read more on Wikipedia →