National Museum of Nuclear Science & History1911
Ernest Rutherford articulates his model of the atom, at the center of which exists a nucleus containing the majority of the atom's mass and all of its positive charge.
1895 to 1937: Early Nuclear Science
1895 to 1937: Early Nuclear Science
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1898
Marie and Pierre Curie discover polonium and radium.
1896
French physicist Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
November 8, 1895
German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers x-rays.
February, 1936
The British Admiralty accepts Leo Szilard's offer to turn over his patents.
December 1935
James Chadwick wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of the neutron.
October 8, 1935
The British War Office rejects Leo Szilard's offer to turn over to them his patents of nuclear energy for free, an offer made to bring them under British secrecy laws.
October 22, 1934
Enrico Fermi discovers the principle of neutron moderation, and the enhanced capture of slow neutrons.
September 1934
Ida Noddack publishes a paper in Zeitshrift fur Angewandte Chemie arguing that the anomalous radioactivities produced by neutron bombardment of uranium may be due to the atom splitting into smaller pieces.
July 4, 1934
Szilard files a patent application describing the use of neutron-induced chain reactions to create explosions and the concept of the critical mass.
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