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He's been described as the "father of nuclear physics", but even Ernest Rutherford was somewhat surprised to learn in 1908 he was getting the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
The New Zealand-born scientist remarked at the ceremony that of all the transformations he'd dealt with in his work, the fastest was his own from physicist to chemist.
Rutherford's life and the his work has been diligently chronicled in a new book by Kiwi author Matthew Wright called Ernest Rutherford and the Birth of Modern Physics.
The book details the man behind the science; the colonial son with a big booming voice who made ground-breaking discoveries and who mentored his students to discover their own.
But more than that, it lays out his incredible work in an accessible way and the impact it's had on how we live now. The book is in bookstores now, and available through Oratia Books.
