Ernest Rutherford

• "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." [1]
• "I have always been very proud of the fact that I am a New Zealander." [1]
  • Auckland 1925
• "I have broken the machine and touched the ghost of matter." [1]
  • On splitting the atom
• "I'm a simple man myself..."[1]
• "It was as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a sheet of tissue paper and it came back to hit you." [1]
  • About the scattering of alpha particles from gold foil.
• "That's the last potato I will ever dig"
  • Family Anecdote
  • Upon being admitted to Cambridge University.
• "That man is an Euclidian point: position without substance." [1]
  • About a self-important person.
• "The more physics you have the less engineering you need." [1]
• "We don’t have the money, so we have to think." [1] or
• "We didn't have the money, so we had to think."
  • About his experimental apparatus and innovation