James
Chadwick was born in Manchester,
England, on 20th October, 1891. He was educated at Manchester
University and Cambridge University.
In
1914 Chadwick went to study under Hans Geiger
at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. During the First
World War Chadwick was interned in Germany as an enemy alien.
After
the war Chadwick returned to Cambridge
where he worked with Ernest Rutherford
in investigating the emission of gamma rays from radioactive materials.
They also studied the transmutation of elements by bombarding them
with alpha particles and investigated the nature of the atomic nucleus.
In
1932 Chadwick discovered the particle in the nucleus of an atom that
became known as the neutron because it has no electric charge.
Chadwick
became professor of Physics at Liverpool
University in 1935 and during
the Second World War he joined the
Manhattan
Project
in the United States. Over the next two years
he worked with Robert
Oppenheimer,
Edward Teller, Rudolf
Peierls,
Otto Frisch, Enrico
Fermi, David Bohm, James
Chadwick, James
Franck,
Felix
Bloch,
Emilio
Segre,
Eugene Wigner, Leo
Szilard and Klaus Fuchs in developing
the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
After the
war Chadwick returned to Liverpool
University
until moving to Cambridge
University
(1948-58). James
Chadwick
died in Cambridge
on 24th July, 1974.
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