Part Four Disintegration of the Atom

Part Four Disintegration of the Atom With the outbreak of war in 1914, many of the young scientists who had thronged to Rutherford's laboratory in Manchester and drawn inspiration from his genius, enlisted for service in the armed forces. Rutherford himself was called to serve on the Admiralty's Board of Invention and Research. It was not until 1917 that he could continue with his own research and then, working almost without assistance, apart from that of William Kay the laboratory steward, he made a discovery as startling and far-reaching in its implications as anything he had achieved previously-the artificial disintegration of an element.