Chadwick, Sir James
Chadwick, Sir James (1891-1974), a British physicist. In 1932, Chadwick discovered the existence of the neutron, a nuclear particle that later proved effective for initiating nuclear reactions. He received the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics.
Chadwick was born in Manchester. He attended Manchester University, where he worked in physicist Ernest Rutherford's laboratory. In 1913 he left to study in Germany, and was imprisoned there during World War I. After the war, Chadwick became Rutherford's assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. He was professor of physics at the University of Liverpool, 1935-43. During World War II, he worked with United States scientists on the atomic bomb. He was knighted in 1945.