Happy Birthday Ernest Rutherford

August 30th is Rutherford's birthday (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937). Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for his research into transmuting elements and demonstrating the nature of radioactivity, which results from the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. He coined the terms alpha, beta, and gamma decay. The element rutherfordium (radioactive, of course) is named in Ernest Rutherford's honor.