Ernest Walton

ERNEST WALTON d1995. Irish physicist and Nobel laureate. He is best known for his work with John Cockcroft to construct one of the earliest types of particle accelerator, the Cockcroft–Walton generator. In experiments performed at Cambridge University in the early 1930s using the generator, Walton and Cockcroft became the first team to use a particle beam to transform one element to another. According to their 1951 Nobel Prize citation : "Thus, for the first time, a nuclear transmutation was produced by means entirely under human control"