Ernest Rutherford (30th August 1871 to 19th October 1937)

Few achievers are considered precious enough to find their final resting place is in Westminster Abbey. Ernest was known to be the “father of nuclear physics” and his ashes were buried there. He was knighted and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908 for changing the face of nuclear physics. Here I am outside the Rutherford Building on the sprawling campus at Manchester University where he split the atom.

He was one of twelve children and born on a farm in New Zealand. With enviable intelligence and hard work he gained a double major degree in Mathematics and Physical Science. A science scholarship propelled him to attend Trinity College in Cambridge. Aged 27 he moved to Canada to work at a university but returned to England nine years later in 1907. He accepted an academic job at the University of Manchester. His scientific experiments were to change the face of physics and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for his model of the atom.

Ernest was just 43 when he was knighted in 1914 (aged 60 he was made the first Baron Rutherford of Nelson, which allowed him to join the House of Lords.) Away from the laboratory he had got married aged 29 to Mary Newton (who he met in New Zealand) and they had a daughter. He held strong anti-Nazi views led him to serve as president of the Academic Assistance Council which helped German refugees. He also published several books and collected host of medals and doctorates like people collect beer mats.

Sadly he was just 66 when he died suddenly. For many years he’d had a small hernia which he neglected to have fixed. It became strangulated causing him to be violently ill and he was rushed to hospital for an operation. Four days later he died of "intestinal paralysis" (where the muscles contractions which move food through your body seize up.) His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey near those of Sir Isaac Newton.

Here I am outside the building where that seminal atomic work happened. It’s still a university building an sits among others within the labyrinthine groves of academia that make up Manchester University. I visited on a sunny Sunday afternoon and it was busy. I had to wait for a time when there was nobody passing the place to take uncluttered photographs.

Nowadays “splitting to atom” is used to explain the non-importance of something but in reality it’s a complex and dangerous thing to do and was done here by Ernest and another physicist called John Cockroft. In this building they helped advanced us progress from the atomic age to the nuclear age. When you force a atoms are broken up they release energy in the form of heat and radiation. All nuclear plants are based on this process on a grand scale to generate energy.

If the blue plaque dedicated to Ernest is not suffice there’s an information board telling readers what happen on the other sides of the bricks in that building. I did a salute and left.

His ashes are buried here in Westminster Abbey...