Nobel Prize Winner
At the age of 36 Ernest Rutherford was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
“..for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances”
Although Ernest Rutherford considered himself a physicist, a report written for the Nobel Chemistry Committee by Dr. Henrik Soderbaum recognised that the foundation for chemistry had radically changed as disintegration 
theory (radioactive decay) showed the immutability of the elements no longer held.
Therefore the Nobel committees of Chemistry and Physics agreed to award Ernest Rutherford the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with a citation that stressed the importance of the disintegration theory (radium decay chain).
The science associated with the work for which Rutherford received the 1908 Nobel Prize is illustrated on every $NZ100 note.
The gridded graph shows two curved lines, one curving down – the radioactive decay – and the other curving up – an activation curve . These correspond to the changing of one atom into a different atom with a decrease (radioactive decay) in the number of the “parent” atom and an equivalent increase in the number of “daughter” atoms. The scale on the bottom part of the grid is in days and the overall curve is recording the rate at which each of the different atoms is decreasing or increasing.
And this applies to many, many atoms that transform from one atom to another. Rutherford and his colleagues were involved in many of these early experiments.
Rutherford received many more medals and awards throughout his life including the insignia of the Order of Merit (1924), Rumford Medal (1905) and the Copley Medal (1922), the latter two both awarded by the Royal Society of London.
Click here to view the medals Ernest Rutherford was awarded over the course of his career.
