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Previous | Home | NextThe "Pioneers Hall" summarize the legacy of nuclear science. From right to left: James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron; William Conrad Röntgen, discoverer of X-rays; Ernest Rutherford, discoverer of the atomic nucleus and the first to produce elemental transmutation; Niels Bohr, who described atomic structure in terms of quantum physics; Irène and Frédérick Joliot-Curie, discoverers of artificial radioactivity; (above) Albert Einstein, who predicted the atom held prodigious quantities of energy; (below) J. J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron; (above) Ernest Walton, co-inventor of the Cockcroft-Walton particle accelerator; (far below, barely visible) Marie Curie, discoverer of radium; Enrico Fermi, who developed the first nuclear reactor; and Glenn Seaborg, discoverer of plutonium. All these persons were recipients of the Nobel Prize; in fact, Röntgen was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics.
