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Originally Posted by Uncle Robin
One snippet that particularly impressed me: "In addition to winning the prize himself, Rutherford mentored and hand-trained eleven future prizewinners, the last in 1978, more than four decades after Rutherford died." I love learning little details like that.
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Rutherford was an amazing guy. The existence of atoms as the fundamental particles of matter had only recently gained acceptance and they were naturally assumed to be solid. Rutherford's ingenious experiments showed that atoms are not only not solid but composed of smaller particles occupying mostly empty space, a gigantic leap forward in the understanding of matter. His stature attracted Niels Bohr to Manchester, helping to launch the quantum mechanics revolution.