Ernest Walton

Ernest Walton MRIA
Walton in 1951
Born	Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (1903-10-06)6 October 1903 Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland, UKGBI
Died	25 June 1995(1995-06-25) (aged 91) Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Resting place	Dean's Grange Cemetery, County Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Education	Wesley College, Dublin Methodist College Belfast
Alma mater	Trinity College Dublin (B.Sc., 1926; M.Sc., 1927) Trinity College, Cambridge (Ph.D, 1931)
Known for	Performing the first fully artificial nuclear reaction and nuclear transmutation (1932)
Title	Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy (1946–1974)
Predecessor	Robert Ditchburn
Successor	Brian Henderson
Spouse	Winifred Wilson ​ (m. 1934)​
Children	4
Awards	MRIA (1935) Hughes Medal (1938) Nobel Prize in Physics (1951)
Scientific career
Fields	Nuclear physics
Institutions	University of Cambridge (1931–1934) Trinity College Dublin (1934–1974)
Doctoral advisor	Ernest Rutherford
Signature

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (6 October 1903 – 25 June 1995) was an Irish nuclear physicist who co-invented the Cockcroft–Walton generator, a type of particle accelerator, and used it for his major work in nuclear transmutation. The accelerator was used to repeatedly bombard lithium with protons, causing the lithium nuclei to split into two alpha particles, and demonstrated the first instance of artificially induced nuclear disintegration. Following this, Walton shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Cockcroft "for their pioneer work on the nuclear transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles". According to their Nobel Prize citation: "Thus, for the first time, a nuclear transmutation was produced by means entirely under human control".^[1] He was also the Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin from 1946 to 1974.

Walton was a key member of the nuclear physics faculty at University of Cambridge, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford. He then spent the majority of his career in Ireland, after returning from England in 1934. He remained active as a member of the teaching faculty at Trinity until 1974.

For his contributions to physics, Walton was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in 1935 and also received the Hughes Medal in 1938. He died in 1995, and was buried in Dean's Grange Cemetery, near Dublin.