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Nuclear Power

Ernest Rutherford

1932
United Kingdom

In 1932, physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that when lithium atoms were "split" by protons from a proton accelerator, immense amounts of energy were released by the principle of mass-energy equivalence. However, he and other nuclear physics pioneers Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein believed harnessing the power of the atom for practical purposes anytime shortly was unlikely.


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