Ernest Walton
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton ( born October 6, 1903 in Dungarvan, County Waterford, † June 25, 1995 in Belfast) was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate in physics.
Life
Ernest Walton was the son of a Methodist pastor. After completing a Methodist College in Belfast in 1922 he began with the study of mathematics and experimental physics at Trinity College, Dublin and graduated both subjects in 1926/27 with a diploma. He then moved to a research fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, which was led by Ernest Rutherford. After receiving his doctorate in 1931 he remained until 1934 in Cambridge and then returned to the Trinity College. He was in 1946 appointed professor of natural philosophy and experimental physics.
Walton married Freda Wilson in 1934, the daughter of a Methodist vicar, and has two sons ( Alan and Philip ) and two daughters ( Marian and Jean). He died in 1995 in Belfast.
Work
Walton did research already in Cambridge at the acceleration of ions by means of DC voltage and also of electrons after the betatron principle. Together with John Cockcroft, he developed there the Cockcroft -Walton accelerator. With him conversions could be ( nuclear reactions ) is triggered and detected by bombardment with fast protons at various atomic nuclei.
In 1951, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their pioneering work in the field of atomic nuclear transformation by artificially accelerated atomic particles " Ernest Walton and John Cockcroft.
Awards
- Hughes Medal, Royal Society London, 1938
- Nobel Prize in Physics, 1951