Ernest Thompson Sinton Walton

Ernest Thompson Sinton Walton 1903-95, Irish physicist, educated at Methodist College (Belfast), Trinity College (Dublin), and Cambridge. He became a fellow of Trinity College in 1934 and professor of natural and experimental philosophy there in 1946. The 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Walton and Sir John Cockcroft for their pioneering work in transmuting atomic nuclei by bombarding elements with artificially accelerated atomic particles.

Bibliography: See B. Cathcart, The Fly in the Cathedral (2004).

Walton, Ernest Thomas Sinton (1903–95) Irish physicist. Walton shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in physics with John Cockcroft for their development (1929) of the first nuclear particle accelerator. In 1931, they produced the first artificial nuclear reaction without radioactive isotopes, using high-energy protons to bombard lithium nuclei.