| Authorised form of name | Marsden; Sir; Ernest (1889 - 1970); physicist and scientific administrator |
| Dates | 1889 - 1970 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Rishton, Blackburn, Lancashire, England |
| Date of birth | 19 February 1889 |
| Place of death | Lowry Bay, Wellington, New Zealand |
| Date of death | 15 December 1970 |
| Occupation | physicist and scientific administrator |
| Research field | Physics |
| Atomic physics |
| Administration |
| Activity | Education: Scholarship at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn; University of Manchester DSc (1914)
Career:
As a student at the University of Manchester he met and began work under Ernest Rutherford (FRS 1903) and conducted the Geiger-Marsden experiment under the supervision of Rutherford and Hans Geiger (1909); taught physics at Easton London College; returned to Manchester to hold the John Harling fellowship (1911); suceeded Geiger as lecturer and research assistant, following the former's return to Germany (1912); relocated to become Professor of Physics at Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand (1915); served New Zealand as assistant director of education (1922-1926); served in the First World War, including in France with the Royal Engineers sound ranging section, where he aided them to accurately pinpoint the location of enemy artillery (1916-1919); awarded the Military Cross (1919); retired from service as major (1928); in the Second Word War, he was appointed scientific adviser to the New Zealand fighting forces with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He worked on radar research and set up a team to develop the rader equipment for use in the Pacific; he also utilised his scientific connections to create a team of New Zealand scientists who would take part in thr Manhattan Project developing the nuclear bomb, and initiated the search for supplying uranium; retired and returned to Wellington where he continued participating on various committees and undertook research into environmental radioactivity (1954); suffered a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair (1966).
Honours:
MC (1919); CBE (1935); CMG (1946); Kt (1958)
Memberships:
FRSNZ (1922) |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 21/03/1946 |
| Age at election | 57 |
| Proposer | Edward Victor Appleton; Charles Galton Darwin; Edward Neville da Costa Andrade; William Lawrence Bragg; Ezer Griffiths; Marcus Laurence Oliphant; James Chadwick; Basil Ferdinand Jamieson Schonland; John Douglas Cockcroft |
| RSActivity | Lectures:
Rutherford 1954 |
| Relationships | Parents: Thomas Marsden (1864–1925), successively a weaver, household draper, and hardware merchant, and Phoebe, the daughter of Fish Holden and Esther Place Holden.
Spouse: Margaret (Maggie) Sutcliffe (1888/9–1957), elementary school teacher, the daughter of Hartley Sutcliffe, a retired blacksmith of Colne.
Children: Esther Mary (Mrs R. J. Nankervis), and a son Dr Ernest David Lindsay Marsden. |
| OtherInfo | Known for the Geiger-Marsden experiment, a landmark series of experiments which found that every atom has a nucleus, where all of its positive charge and most of its mass are concentrated. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
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| Source | Sources:
DSB vol 18 pp 595-597; DNB
Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1971 vol 17 pp 463-496, plate, by C A Fleming
References:
Robin J H Clark and Michael J Kelly, 'New Zealand, New Zealanders and the Royal Society' in NR 1994 vol 48 pp 263-281
E N da C Andrade, 'Some Reminiscences of Ernest Marsden's Days with Rutherford at Manchester' in NR 1968 vol 23 pp 247-250
Notes:
DSB gives death date as 15 December 1970 |
| Code | NA7200 |