Ernest walton biography

Irish nuclear physicist (1903–1995)

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (6 October 1903 – 25 June 1995) was an Irish nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics who first split the atom.^[1] He is best known for his work with John Cockcroft to construct one of the earliest types of particle accelerator, the Cockcroft–Walton generator.

In experiments performed at Cambridge University in the early 1930s using the generator, Walton and Cockcroft became the first team to use a particle beam to transform one element to another. According to their Nobel Prize citation: "Thus, for the first time, a nuclear transmutation was produced by means entirely under human control".^[2]

Early years

Ernest Walton was born in Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford, to a Methodist minister father, the Rev.

John Walton (1874–1936), who was from Cloughjordan in County Tipperary, and his wife, Anna Sinton (1874–1906), who was from Richhill in County Armagh.^[