James Chadwick
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Manchester gained a pioneering reputation for a city at the centre of physics, namely in the field of nuclear physics. The 'Nuclear Family' was the alias given to a group of scientists who studied nuclear physics in Manchester. 'Family' highlights the consistent development through the generations in nuclear physics, beginning with Thomson in the late 18th century and ending with James Chadwick in the 1930s who discovered the neutron. Ernest Rutherford is often described as the 'father of nuclear physics', equally the same could be said of J. J. Thomson who discovered the electron and isotopes, and ultimately taught Rutherford who later go on to split the atom. Scientists who were part of the 'nuclear family' in Manchester included J. J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Hans Geiger, Ernest Marsden, John Cockcroft and James Chadwick.