Ernest Marsden

Sir Ernest Marsden (1889 to 1970) was an English-born New Zealand physicist who, as an undergraduate under Ernest Rutherford at Manchester, carried out the Geiger-Marsden gold foil experiment with Hans Geiger, which led to Rutherford's picture of the atom with a central nucleus. In 1915 he became Professor of Physics at Victoria University College in Wellington and from 1926 he was Secretary of New Zealand's Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. There he pioneered the non-medical use of radioisotopes in 1939, initiated the search for uranium in New Zealand, and formed a team of young New Zealand scientists to take part in the Manhattan Project. He held a post-war vision of a nuclear New Zealand with local research reactors and, in 1946, established a team of scientists to research atomic energy and its application to agriculture, health and industry. He was knighted in 1958 for services to science and in later life came to oppose nuclear weapons testing.