Everything about Ernest Walton totally explained
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (
October 6,
1903 –
June 25,
1995) was an
Irish physicist and
Nobel laureate for his work with
John Cockcroft with "atom-smashing" experiments done at
Cambridge University in the early 1930s. Walton is the only Irishman to have won a Nobel Prize in science.
Early Years
Ernest Walton was born in
Abbeyside,
County Waterford, Ireland, to a
Methodist minister father, Rev. John Walton (1874-1936) and Anna Sinton (1874-1906), growing up mostly in
Ulster. In those days a general clergyman's family moved once every three years, and this practice carried Ernest and his family, while he was a small child, to counties
Limerick and
County Monaghan. He attended day schools in counties
Down,
Tyrone, and
Wesley College Dublin before becoming a boarder at
Methodist College Belfast in 1915, where he excelled in science and mathematics.
In 1922 Walton won scholarships to
Trinity College, Dublin for the study of mathematics and science. He was awarded bachelor's and master's degrees from Trinity in 1926 and 1927, respectively. During these years at college, Walton received numerous prizes for excellence in physics and mathematics (seven prizes in all). Following graduation he was accepted as a research student at
Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Sir
Ernest Rutherford, Director of
Cambridge University's
Cavendish Laboratory. At the time there were four
Nobel Prize laureates on the staff at the Cavendish lab and a further five were to emerge, including Walton and
John Cockcroft. Walton was awarded his Ph.D. in 1931 and remained at Cambridge as a researcher until 1934.
During the early 1930s Walton and John Cockcroft collaborated to build an apparatus that split the
nuclei of
lithium atoms by bombarding them with a stream of
protons accelerated inside a high-voltage tube (700 kilovolts). The splitting of the lithium nuclei produced
helium nuclei. 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 and Cockcroft the Nobel Prize in physics in 1951.
Career at Trinity College Dublin
Ernest Walton returned to Ireland in 1934 to became a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in the physics department, and in 1946 was appointed professor with the grand old title
Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy. Walton's lecturing was considered outstanding as he'd the ability to present complicated matters in simple and easy-to-understand terms. His research interests were pursued with very limited resources, but yet he was able to study, in the late 1950's, the phosphorescent effect in glasses, secondary-electron emissions from surfaces under positive-ion bombardment, radiocarbon dating and low-level counting, and the deposition of thin films on glass.
Family life
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, Jean Clarke and Winifred Walton.
Walton was a longtime member of the board of governors of
Wesley College, Dublin, a Methodist school he attended briefly as a boy.
Later years
On his retirement from Trinity College Dublin in 1974, Walton returned to
Northern Ireland, where he'd grown up as a child, and for the remaining twenty years of his life lived in
Belfast. He died in there on
June 25,
1995, aged 91. He was widely respected, much admired, and regarded as a modest, unassuming man.
Honours
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 are credited with being the first to disintegrate the lithium nucleus by bombardment with accelerated protons and identifying
helium nuclei in the products. More generally, they'd built an apparatus which showed that nuclei of various lightweight elements (such as lithium) could be split 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'd been a boarder for five years and the Walton Prize for Physics at Wesley College.
Further Information
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