Ernest Rutherford - British Physicist
(1871-1937)
1898
While working at the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge, Rutherford identifies two types of radiation emitted from Uranium. He calls them alpha and beta. In 1900, Paul Villard finds a third type which he calls gamma. During this same year, it is discovered that beta radiation is composed of electrons, and gamma radiation is very short wavelength electro-magnetic rays. The nature of alpha radiation remains a mystery until 1908 when Rutherford shows them to be Helium nulcei.

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