E-Paper
Trump's bizarre claim ‘US split the atom’ fumes New Zealanders; Who was Sir Ernest Rutherford?
Donald Trump angered New Zealanders on his first day in office when he asserted that America split the atom, something that Sir Ernest Rutherford accomplished.
Donald Trump angered New Zealanders on his first day in office when he asserted that America split the atom, something that Sir Ernest Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand, accomplished.
During the speech after taking the oath of office for his second term in the White House, Trump praised America's accomplishments by crediting the United States with the renowned physicist's historic accomplishment.
"Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness, they crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the wild west, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand,” he stated while addressing the gathering of politicians, celebrities and tech CEOs.
Trump's claim fume New Zealanders
On social media, Nick Smith, the mayor of Nelson blasted Trump and expressed disbelief that the US president would make such a claim.
“I was a bit surprised by new president Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans split the atom when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford,” Smith wrote on Facebook.
He stated that in order “to keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate,” he would be summoning US Ambassador to New Zealand to Nelson for a visit to the Lord Rutherford Memorial at Brightwater.
Editor Ben Uffindell of the satirical news website The Civilian was also stunned. "Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom. That’s THE ONE THING WE DID,” he wrote.
Trump's comments prompted a wave of online posts about Rutherford, whose name can be found on buildings, streets, and institutions, and whose work is proudly studied by students in New Zealand.
Who was Sir Ernest Rutherford?
Rutherford, who belonged to a farmer's family, conducted research in nuclear and atomic physics while working in the UK and Canada. He split an atom for the first time in 1917 at Victoria University of Manchester in England, earning him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
In 1932, British and Irish scientists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under Rutherford's leadership, successfully split the atom at at the University of Cambridge.
Rutherford is known as the “father of nuclear physics” due tohis scientific accomplishments. He is regarded as one of history's finest scientists.
What to know about Trump's false claim
This was not the first time that Trump made such a bizarre claim that America split the atom in 2020. He made the similar claim while highlighting US historical accomplishments at a speech at Mount Rushmore.
The official White House X account also shared this at the time.
As part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, the United States became the first country to build and test an atom bomb.
