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Ernest Walton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton  |
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| Born | October 6, 1903 Dungarvan, Ireland, UK |
| Died | June 25, 1995 Belfast, UK |
| Nationality | Republic of Ireland and UK |
| Field | Physicist |
| Institutions | Trinity College Dublin University of Cambridge |
| Known for | Carrying out the first disintegration of the atomic nucleus by artificially accelerated protons ("splitting the atom") |
| Notable prizes | Nobel Prize in Physics (1951) |
| Religious stance | Methodist |
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (October 6, 1903 – June 25, 1995) was an Irish physicist and the winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics along with John Cockcroft, for "atom-smashing" experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s. Walton is the only Irishman to have won a Nobel Prize in science.
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Ernest Walton was born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland, to a Methodist minister father, Rev. John Walton (1874 - 1936) and Anna Sinton (1874 - 1906). He mostly grew up in Ulster. A general clergyman's family moved once every three years in those days and Ernest lived in counties Limerick and Monaghan for periods as a small child, then attended day schools in counties Down, Tyrone and Dublin, before becoming a boarder at Methodist College Belfast in 1915. Walton excelled in science and mathematics at Methodist College.
Walton won scholarships to study science and mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1922. He was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1926 and a master's degree in 1927. During these years at Trinity College Dublin, Walton received numerous prizes for excellence in physics and mathematics (seven prizes in all). Walton was then accepted as a research student at Cambridge University, under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford, Director of Cavendish Laboratory. There were four Nobel Prize winners on the staff there and a further five to emerge, including Walton and John Cockcroft. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1931 and remained at Cambridge as a researcher until 1934.
During the early 1930s a partnership between Walton and John Cockcroft built an apparatus that split the nuclei of lithium atoms by bombarding them with a stream of protons in a high-voltage tube (700 kilovolts). The high voltage environment accelerates the stream of protons through the tube. The atom splitting produced helium atoms in place of the lithium. This was experimental verification of theories about atomic structure that had been proposed earlier by Rutherford, George Gamow, and others. The successful apparatus -- a type of particle accelerator now called the Cockcroft-Walton generator -- helped to usher in an era of particle-accelerator-based experimental nuclear physics. It was this research at Cambridge in the early 1930s that won Walton the Nobel Prize.
Ernest Walton returned to Ireland in 1934 to became a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in the physics department. In 1946 he was appointed professor with the grand old title Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Walton's lecturing was considered outstanding. He had the ability to present complicated matters in simple and easy-to-understand terms. His research interests were conducted with very limited resources. He identified, in the late 1950's physics research priorities, the phosphorescent effect in glasses, secondary electron emissions from surfaces under positive ion bombardment, radiocarbon dating and low level counting and disposition of thin films on glass.
Ernest Walton married Freda Wilson, daughter of an Irish Methodist Minister, on August 23, 1934. They had five children, Dr. Alan Walton (college lecturer in physics, Magdalene College, Cambridge), Mrs Marian Woods, Professor Philip Walton (Professor of Applied Physics, National University of Ireland, Galway), Mrs Jean Clarke and Winifred Walton (died 1936).
Walton was a longtime member of the board of governors of Wesley College, Dublin, a Methodist school he had attended briefly as a boy.
On his retirement from Trinity College Dublin in 1974, Walton emigrated back to Northern Ireland, the part of Ireland where he had grown up as a child, and for the remaining twenty years of his life he lived in Belfast. He died in Belfast on June 25, 1995, aged 91. He was widely respected and much admired while regarded as a modest, unassuming man.
Walton and John Cockcroft were recipients of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for their "work on the transmutation of the atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles" (popularly known as splitting the atom). They get specific credit for being the first to disintegrate the nucleus of the lithium atom by bombardment with accelerated protons and identify helium nuclei in the resulting products. More generally they had built an apparatus which showed that various lightweight elements (such as lithium) could be smashed to pieces by fast-moving protons.
Walton and Cockcroft received the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1938. In much later years -- and predominantly after his retirement in 1974 -- Walton received honorary degrees or conferrals from numerous British Isles and North American institutions.
The "Walton Causeway Park" in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford was dedicated in his honor with Walton himself attending the ceremony in 1989. After his death the Waterford Institute of Technology named a large building the ETS Walton Building and a plaque was placed on the site of his Co. Waterford birthplace. Other honours for Walton include the Walton Building at Methodist College, Belfast, the school where he had been a boarder for five years.
- Cathcart, Brian, The Fly in the Cathedral, Penguin, 2005. ISBN 0-14-027906-7
- McBrierty, Vincent J., Walton, The Irish Scientist, Trinity College Dublin Press, 2003. ISBN 1-871408-22-9
- Ernest T. S. Walton – Biography.
- Annotated bibliography for Ernest Walton from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues