James Chadwick

Who was James Chadwick?

Sir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. 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 the Second World War. He was knighted in England in 1945 for achievements in physics.

A graduate of the University of Manchester, he studied under Ernest Rutherford, known as the "father of nuclear physics". Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger. Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, he was able to demonstrate that beta radiation produced a continuous electromagnetic spectrum, and not discrete lines as had been thought. Still in Germany when the First World War broke out in Europe, he spent the war in the Ruhleben internment camp.