1903-1995

Irish Physicist

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics with John Douglas Cockcroft (1897-1967) for their pioneering studies of the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles. Cockcroft and Walton had developed the first nuclear particle accelerator, which became known as the Cockcroft-Walton generator.

Ernest Walton, son of a Methodist minister, was born at Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland. After attending day schools in Banbridge and Cookstown, Walton was sent as a boarder to the Methodist College, Belfast, in 1915. Having excelled in mathematics and science, he was able to enter Trinity College, Dublin, on a scholarship in 1922. He specialized in physics, and graduated with first-class honors in both mathematics and experimental science. In 1927, he received his M.Sc. degree and a Research Scholarship, and went to Cambridge University to work in the Cavendish Laboratory under Ernest Rutherford...