New Zealanders are not typically ones for splitting hairs, but when it comes to who split the atom, you had better have your facts straight – particularly if you have just been sworn in as the 47th US president.
During his inaugural address on Monday, Donald Trump reeled off a list of US achievements, including a claim that its experts split the atom.
However, that honour belongs to revered physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander who managed the historic feat in 1917 at Victoria University of Manchester in England. The element rutherfordium was named after him in 1997.
Nick Smith, the mayor of the city of Nelson near where Rutherford grew up, said he would invite the US ambassador to New Zealand – once Trump has appointed one – to “visit the Lord Rutherford memorial in Brightwater so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate”.
“I was a bit surprised by new president Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans split the atom when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford,” Smith said.
Ben Uffindell, the editor of satirical news site The Civilian, was similarly incredulous. “Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom. That’s THE ONE THING WE DID,” Uffindell posted.
Trump, who is no stranger to using inflammatory language, sparked ire in New Zealand after telling an inauguration crowd: “Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness, they crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the wild west, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.”
It is not the first time Trump has erroneously claimed the US split the atom, nor the first time it has drawn ire from New Zealanders.
In a strikingly similar speech, given at Mount Rushmore in 2020, Trump said: “Americans harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the internet. We settled the wild west, won two world wars, landed American astronauts on the moon – and one day soon, we will plant our flag on Mars!”
Rutherford, who is sometimes referred to as the father of nuclear physics, discovered the idea of radioactive half-life and showed that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another. He was awarded a Nobel prize for chemistry in 1908 “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements”.
Rutherford later became director of the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge University where, under his leadership, the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and the first experiment to split the nucleus was carried out by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton.
• This article was amended on 21 January 2025. The caption on the second photo was amended to correct the spelling of Hans Geiger’s first name.
