Which element created by bombarding California-249 with a carbon-12 nucleus is named in honour of New Zealand chemist Ernest Rutherford, who was the first to explain the structure of atoms?

The correct answer is Element 104.Key Points

• Element 104 created by bombarding California-249 with a carbon-12 nucleus is named in honour of New Zealand chemist Ernest Rutherford, who was the first to explain the structure of atoms.
• Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS, HonFRSE, was a New Zealander physicist who became renowned as the father of nuclear physics (30 August 1871–19 October 1937).
• He is regarded by Encyclopaedia Britannica as the finest experimentalist.
• In 1917, he conducted the first artificially generated nuclear reaction using nitrogen nuclei that had been subjected to an alpha particle bombardment. As a result, he found the emission of a subatomic particle that he first identified as the proton in 1920 after initially referring to it as the "hydrogen atom" in 1919.
• He was interred next to Sir Isaac Newton at Westminster Abbey upon his passing in 1937. In 1997, the atom rutherfordium (element 104) was named in his honour.

Additional Information

• In 1914, Rutherford was knighted. He worked on a top-secret effort to address the issues with submarine detection by sonar during World War I.
• He went back to the Cavendish in 1919, taking J. J. Thomson's place as director and professor there.
• James Chadwick received Nobel Prize during his tenure for discovering the neutron.
• In the 1925 New Year's Honours, he was named to the Order of Merit and elevated to the peerage of Baron Rutherford of Nelson.