61 Facts About James Chadwick

James Chadwick was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics.

James Chadwick elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger in Berlin.

James Chadwick was Rutherford's assistant director of research at the Cavendish Laboratory for over a decade at a time when it was one of the world's foremost centres for the study of physics, attracting students like John Cockcroft, Norman Feather, and Mark Oliphant.

James Chadwick followed his discovery of the neutron by measuring its mass.

James Chadwick anticipated that neutrons would become a major weapon in the fight against cancer.

James Chadwick left the Cavendish Laboratory in 1935 to become a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool, where he overhauled an antiquated laboratory and, by installing a cyclotron, made it an important centre for the study of nuclear physics.

James Chadwick was born in Bollington, Cheshire, on 20 October 1891, the first child of John Joseph Chadwick, a cotton spinner, and Anne Mary Knowles, a domestic servant.

James Chadwick now had two younger brothers, Harry and Hubert; a sister had died in infancy.

James Chadwick chose to attend Victoria University of Manchester, which he entered in 1908.

James Chadwick meant to study mathematics, but enrolled in physics by mistake.

The physics department was headed by Ernest Rutherford, who assigned research projects to final-year students, and he instructed James Chadwick to devise a means of comparing the amount of radioactive energy of two different sources.

James Chadwick was awarded his Master of Science degree in 1912, and was appointed a Beyer Fellow.

James Chadwick elected to go to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin in 1913, to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger.

James Chadwick was still in Germany at the start of the First World War, and was interned in the Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin, where he was allowed to set up a laboratory in the stables and conduct scientific experiments using improvised materials such as radioactive toothpaste.

James Chadwick was released after the Armistice with Germany came into effect in November 1918, and returned to his parents' home in Manchester, where he wrote up his findings over the previous four years for the 1851 Exhibition commissioners.

James Chadwick looked at the nuclear charge of platinum, silver, and copper, and experimentally found that this was the same as the atomic number within an error of less than 1.5 per cent.

James Chadwick was awarded a Clerk-Maxwell studentship in 1920, and enrolled as a Doctor of Philosophy student at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

The Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Sir William McCormick arranged for James Chadwick to become Rutherford's assistant director of research.

In 1925, James Chadwick met Aileen Stewart-Brown, the daughter of a Liverpool stockbroker.

At a conference at Cambridge on beta particles and gamma rays in 1928, James Chadwick met Geiger again.

The major drawback with it was that it detected alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and radium, which the Cavendish laboratory normally used in its experiments, emitted all three, and was therefore unsuitable for what James Chadwick had in mind.

James Chadwick had his Australian 1851 Exhibition scholar, Hugh Webster, duplicate their results.

Rutherford and James Chadwick disagreed; protons were too heavy for that.

James Chadwick dropped all his other responsibilities to concentrate on proving the existence of the neutron, assisted by Feather and frequently working late at night.

James Chadwick devised a simple apparatus that consisted of a cylinder containing a polonium source and beryllium target.

In February 1932, after only about two weeks of experimentation with neutrons, James Chadwick sent a letter to Nature titled "Possible Existence of a Neutron".

Wolfgang Pauli proposed another kind of particle on 4 December 1930 in order to explain the continuous spectrum of beta radiation that James Chadwick had reported in 1914.

James Chadwick therefore chafed under Rutherford, who clung to the belief that good nuclear physics could still be done without large, expensive equipment, and turned down the request for a cyclotron.

James Chadwick was himself a critic of Big Science in general, and Lawrence in particular, whose approach he considered careless and focused on technology at the expense of science.

When Lawrence postulated the existence of a new and hitherto unknown particle that he claimed was a possible source of limitless energy at the Solvay Conference in 1933, James Chadwick responded that the results were more likely attributable to contamination of the equipment.

In March 1935, James Chadwick received an offer of the Lyon Jones Chair of physics at the University of Liverpool, in his wife's home town, to succeed Lionel Wilberforce.

The laboratory was so antiquated that it still ran on direct current electricity, but James Chadwick seized the opportunity, assuming the chair on 1 October 1935.

James Chadwick's medal was sold at auction in 2014 for $329,000.

James Chadwick was automatically a committee member of both faculties, and in 1938 he was appointed to a commission headed by Lord Derby to investigate the arrangements for cancer treatment in Liverpool.

James Chadwick anticipated that neutrons and radioactive isotopes produced with the 37-inch cyclotron could be used to study biochemical processes, and might become a weapon in the fight against cancer.

James Chadwick did not believe that there was any likelihood of another war with Germany in 1939, and took his family for a holiday on a remote lake in northern Sweden.

When he reached Liverpool, James Chadwick found Joseph Rotblat, a Polish post-doctoral fellow who had come to work with the cyclotron, was now destitute, as he was cut off from funds from Poland.

James Chadwick promptly hired Rotblat as a lecturer, despite his poor grasp of English.

In October 1939, James Chadwick received a letter from Sir Edward Appleton, the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, asking for his opinion on the feasibility of an atom bomb.

James Chadwick did not dismiss the possibility, but carefully went over the many theoretical and practical difficulties involved.

James Chadwick decided to investigate the properties of uranium oxide further with Rotblat.

In July 1941, Chadwick was chosen to write the final draft of the MAUD Report, which, when presented by Vannevar Bush to President Franklin D Roosevelt in October 1941, inspired the US government to pour millions of dollars into the pursuit of an atom bomb.

James Chadwick was reluctant to move Tube Alloys there, believing that the United Kingdom was a better location for the isotope separation plant.

The Americans disliked Akers, so James Chadwick was appointed technical advisor to the Combined Policy Committee, and the head of the British Mission.

James Chadwick became the only man apart from Groves and his second in command to have access to all the American research and production facilities for the uranium bomb.

James Chadwick accepted that the Americans did not need British help, but that it could still be useful in bringing the project to an early and successful conclusion.

James Chadwick endeavoured to place British scientists in as many parts of the project as possible in order to facilitate a post-war British nuclear weapons project to which Chadwick was committed.

James Chadwick considered this to be a recognition of the work of the whole Tube Alloys project.

Inside its pit was a polonium-beryllium modulated neutron initiator, a development of the technique that James Chadwick had used to discover the neutron over a decade before.

Shortly after the war ended, James Chadwick was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy.

James Chadwick was appointed as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.

James Chadwick clashed with fellow ACAE member Patrick Blackett, who disagreed with Chadwick's conviction that Britain needed to acquire its own nuclear weapons; but it was Chadwick's position that was ultimately adopted.

James Chadwick returned to Britain in 1946, to find a country still beset by wartime rationing and shortages.

In 1948, James Chadwick accepted an offer to become the Master of Gonville and Caius College.

James Chadwick increased the number of research fellowships from 31 to 49, and sought to bring talent into the college.

James Chadwick was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1927.

James Chadwick became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946 and an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1948.

James Chadwick was made a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1970 for "services to science", and went to Buckingham Palace for the investiture ceremony.

James Chadwick became more frail, and seldom left his flat, although he travelled to Liverpool for celebrations of his eightieth birthday.

James Chadwick's papers are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, and are accessible to the public.

The James Chadwick Building, which houses part of the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, University of Manchester is named in his honour.