Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand physicist popularly known as the father of nuclear physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.” He established the fact that radioactivity involved the nuclear transformation of one chemical element to another. He also identified and named the Alpha and Beta radiations. He named the Gamma rays as well. The Rutherford model of the atom was introduced when he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus. He conducted experiments that resulted in the first ‘splitting’ of the atom in 1917; during the process he discovered and named the proton. Under his supervision as the Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, his associate James Chadwick proved his theorization of neutrons and soon after, the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner was conducted by his students, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1925, and was raised to the peerage as Lord Rutherford of Nelson in 1931. The chemical element 104 - Rutherfordium has been named after him.