12.
The Atom Splitters
This
first controlled artificial disintegration of elements
attracted a lot of attention from newspapers around
the world and Cockcroft and Walton became celebrities
as 'the atom splitters'. In one interview Rutherford
was asked if he thought atomic energy could be used
as a source of power, but Rutherford was convinced that
'the atom will always be a sink and never a reservoir
of energy'. Cockcroft contradicted him, but neither
could know about uranium fission, discovered seven years
later by Otto Hahn.
 Cockcroft
and Walton received a more official form of recognition
in 1951, when they finally shared a Nobel Prize in Physics
'for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic
nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles'.
They had taken from 1929 to 1932 to make their discovery,
but had still managed to be the first experimenters
in the upcoming era of high-energy physics.
The
Cambridge accelerator was soon followed by other types
of accelerator, including Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron
and the Van der Graaff generator. Even so, the Cockcroft-Walton style
machine is still used today, including its use as a 'pre-accelerator'
to even more powerful machines.
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