Centenary of the birth of Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton
Press release October 2003
October 6th is the centenary of the birth, in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, of E.T.S. Walton, the only Irish person to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Science. A 57 cent commemorative stamp was issued by An Post last month to mark the centenary. The Department of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, with which he was associated for most of his life, is celebrating the centenary of his birth with a day of events on Friday 17th October. This will include
- a commemorative lecture by Brian Cathcart of Kingston University, London
- the launch of a new biography of Walton by Professor Vincent McBrierty of Trinity's Physics Department
- a charity concert in the evening, given in the College Chapel by members of the Department.
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton entered Trinity College as an undergraduate in 1922, where he obtained a double first class degree in Physics and Mathematics. In 1926 he went to Cambridge to work with the 'father' of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford. Walton, in collaboration with John Cockcroft, achieved worldwide fame there in 1932 when he split the nucleus of the atom by artificial means, beating other physicists in the United States who were embarked on a similar mission.
As a result Walton achieved at least five separate major successes:
- He verified the most famous equation in Physics, Einstein's prediction of the equivalence of mass and energy, E = mc2.
- He transmuted a chemical element by controlled means for the first time.
- He showed that a substantial release of nuclear energy could be obtained from such a transmutation.
- He verified a major prediction of the new theory of wave mechanics formulated by Erwin Schrödinger, who later became the first director of the Theoretical Physics School of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
- He launched the era of accelerator-based experimental nuclear physics.
Despite several opportunities to continue his research in laboratories in the United States and elsewhere, he returned to Trinity College in 1934 when he was elected to Fellowship. From 1947 he was the eighteenth Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and head of the Physics Department. In 1951 he and Cockcroft were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 'for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles'.
Walton retained his links with Trinity College for many years after his retirement in 1974, and he presented his Nobel medal and citation to the College shortly before his death in 1995. President Mary Robinson, who had visited him just before his death, unveiled a plaque in his honour outside Trinity's Physics Department in 1997.
Last updated: Oct 06 2006. | back to top