Sir James Chadwick

Born: 20-Oct-1891
Birthplace: Manchester, England
Father: John Joseph Chadwick (laundry manager)
Mother: Anne Mary Knowles
Wife: Aileen Stewart-Brown (m. 11-Aug-1925, two daughters)
Daughter: Joanna Stewart Chadwick Batterham (b. 1-Feb-1927 twin)
Daughter: Judith Chadwick (b. 1-Feb-1927 twin)
Died: 24-Jul-1974
Location of death: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Cause of death: unspecified
Executive summary: Discovered the neutron

Sir James Chadwick, CH was an English physicist and Nobel

laureate who is best known for discovering the neutron. This
discovery transformed subatomic physics and enabled scientists to
produce new elements. It also led to the discovery of nuclear
fission and its uses for both war and peace. Chadwick was the leader
of the British technical team that helped the United States develop
the atomic bomb during World War II.

Biography

James Chadwick was born in Bollington, Cheshire, England on

October 20, 1891, the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne
Mary Knowles. He went to Bollington Cross C of E Primary School,
and attended Manchester Municipal Secondary School. When he
was sixteen, he won a scholarship to Manchester University. He at
first intended to study mathematics, but mistakenly attended a
physics orientation, and enrolled in physics instead. He at first had
misgivings about his decision, but after the first year, he found the
course work more interesting. He was enrolled in Ernest
Rutherford's classes on electricity and magnetism, and Rutherford
later assigned Chadwick a research project on the radioactive
element radium.
Early Research

Chadwick graduated in 1911, and continued to work under

Rutherford on gamma ray (high energy x-ray) absorption, earning a
masters degree in 1913. Rutherford was instrumental in obtaining a
research scholarship for Chadwick that required him to work at a
location other than that through which he had obtained his masters
degree. He chose to study in Berlin under Hans Geiger, who had been
at Manchester while Chadwick was completing his master's degree.
During this period, Chadwick established the existence of continuous
beta ray (high velocity electron) spectra, a result that baffled
investigators at the time and that led to the discovery of the neutrino.

Internment during World War 1

It was just before World War I, and as the outbreak of hostilities

became imminent, Geiger warned Chadwick to return to England as
soon as possible. Chadwick was sidetracked by advice from a travel
company and ended up in a German prisoner of war camp until the
war ended. As the time passed during his five-year confinement,
Chadwick became more friendly with his captors, and he and other
British captives managed to undertake some rudimentary research on
fluorescence.

Work at the Cavendish Laboratory

Upon his release at the end of the war in 1918, Chadwick once again
joined Rutherford, and confirmed that the charge of the nucleus was
the same as the atomic number. In 1921, he was awarded a research
fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, and in the following year,
became Rutherford's assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory. While he
was the day-to-day operational manager of the laboratory, he still
found time to conduct research, the direction of which was generally
suggested by Rutherford. Chadwick and Charles D. Ellis, who had
been a fellow prisoner with Chadwick during the war and later
pursued his studies at Trinity College and under Rutherford,
investigated the transmutation of elements under bombardment by
alpha particles (helium nuclei). A research group in Vienna had
reported results that were at odds with those achieved at the
Cavendish, the later of which were ably defended by further
experimentation by Chadwick and his colleagues.

In 1925, Chadwick married Eileen Stewart-Brown. Twin daughters

were born to the couple, Joanna and Judith Chadwick.

During the mid-1920s, Chadwick conducted experiments on the

scattering of alpha particles shot into targets made of metallic
elements including gold and uranium, and then by helium itself, the
nucleus of which is the same mass as an alpha particle. This
scattering was asymmetric, a result Chadwick explained in 1930 as a
quantum phenomenon.

The Neutron

As early as 1920, Rutherford had proposed the existence of an

electrically neutral particle called the neutron to explain
for isotopes of hydrogen. This particle was believed to be composed of
an electron and a proton, but the emissions predicted by such a
composition could not be detected.

In 1930, it was discovered that the bombardment of light nuclei by

alpha rays emitted from polonium gave rise to penetrating rays
without an electric charge. These were assumed to be gamma rays.
However, when a beryllium target was used, the rays were many times
more penetrating than those generated by using other target
materials. In 1931, Chadwick and his co-worker, H.C. Webster,
suggested that the neutral rays were actually evidence of the existence
of the neutron.
In 1932, the husband-wife team of Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot
showed that the emissions from beryllium were more penetrating than
previous investigators had reported, but they still referred to these
emissions as gamma rays. Chadwick read the report, and immediately
set to work on calculating the mass of a neutral particle that could
account for the latest results. He used the beryllium emissions to
bombard a variety of target elements, and established that the results
were consistent with impact by a neutral particle with a mass almost
identical to that of the proton. This represented the experimental
verification of the existence of the neutron. For this achievement,
Chadwick was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 1925.
The neutron quickly became a tool of nuclear scientists, who used it to
penetrate and transform the nuclei of elements, since it suffers no
repulsion from a positively charged nucleus. In this way, Chadwick
prepared the way towards the fission of uranium 235 and towards the
creation of the atomic bomb. For this important discovery he was
awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in 1932, and
subsequently the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935. Later, he found
out that a German scientist had discovered the neutron at the same
time. But Hans Falkenhagen (Rostock) was afraid of publishing his
results. When Chadwick learned of Falkenhagen's discovery, he
offered to share the Nobel Prize with him. Falkenhagen, however,
modestly refused the honor.
Chadwick’s discovery made it possible to create elements heavier
than uranium in the laboratory. His discovery particularly
inspired Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist and Nobel laureate, to discover
nuclear reactions brought by slowed neutrons, and led Otto
Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, German radiochemists in Berlin, to the
revolutionary discovery of “nuclear fission,” which triggered the
development of the atomic bomb.

Nuclear Fission and the Atomic Bomb

Chadwick became professor of physics at Liverpool University in 1935.

As a result of the Frisch-Peierls memorandum in 1940 on the
feasibility of an atomic bomb, he was appointed to the MAUD
Committee that investigated the matter further. He visited North
America as part of the Tizard Mission in 1940 to collaborate with the
Americans and Canadians on nuclear research. Returning to England
in November 1940, he concluded that nothing would emerge from this
research until after the war. In December 1940 Franz Simon, who
had been commissioned by MAUD, reported that it was possible to
separate the isotope uranium-235. Simon's report included cost
estimates and technical specifications for a large uranium enrichment
plant. Chadwick later wrote that it was at that time that he "realized
that a nuclear bomb was not only possible, it was inevitable. I had
then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy." Chadwick
and his group generally supported a U-235 bomb, and approved of its
separation by diffusion from its more plentiful U-238 isotope.

He shortly afterward went to Los Alamos, the headquarters of the

Manhattan Project, and, along with N. Bohr, "gave invaluable advice"
to the American effort that developed the atomic bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chadwick was knighted in 1945.

After World War II, Chadwick returned to his post at Liverpool. He

stepped down in 1958, essentially signaling his retirement,
afterwards spending a decade in North Wales until his return in
1969 to Cambridge, where he died on July 24, 1974.

Legacy

The discovery of the neutron and its properties transformed subatomic

physics. It enabled scientists to produce new elements, and led to the
discovery of nuclear fission and its consequences for both war and
peace.

Chadwick's remarkable confinement under adverse conditions during

World War I could have ended his career in physics. Rutherford,
however, was a powerful enough mentor to have resurrected Chadwick
from that difficult experience. Chadwick's success can be seen in light
of his training under Rutherford, demonstrating a relationship similar
to that of Ludwig von Helmholtz and his students such as Heinrich
Hertz and Albert Michelson. While Chadwick's results were certainly
his own, his story shows that a hefty element of scientific discovery
lies in teamwork, both among co-workers and with senior
investigators who laid the foundation for those who followed them.