Stamps of Russia: Ernest Rutherford, Physicist (1971)

This issue celebrated the birth centenary of Lord Rutherford, physicist. Born in 1971 near Nelson in Mew Zealand, he was the founder of Nuclear Physics.

He received the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1908 and the simplicity and power of his work gives him a place as one of the great experimental physicists of all time. In personality he was forceful, exberant and enormously likable, with physicist friends worldwide, many of them, former students of his. He was not, of course, always right; his response to a suggestion that nuclear energy might one day be useful was that the idea was ‘moonshine.’ But that was in the early 1930s; by 1936 he saw some prospect of useful atomic energy.’

He died in 1937.

Engraved by V. Zavialov. Photp. Perf 12.

Released August 24, 1971.