27-MAY-1897 :- Birth of John Cockcroft , Nobel Prize winner,

Sir John Douglas Cockcroft
(27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atomic nucleus with Ernest Walton, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power. He was the first Master of Churchill College and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, together with his wife Elizabeth and son John, known as Timothy, who had died at the age of two in 1929.

In 1928, he began to work on the acceleration of protons with Ernest Walton. In 1932, they bombarded lithium with high energy neutrons, electrons and protons and succeeded in transmuting it into helium and other chemical elements. This was one of the earliest experiments to change the atomic nucleus of one element to a different nucleus by artificial means. This feat was popularly known as splitting the atom.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he took up the post of Assistant Director of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply, working on radar. In 1944, he took charge of the Canadian Atomic Energy project and became Director of the Montreal Laboratory and Chalk River Laboratories, replacing Hans von Halban, who was considered a security risk. In 1946, he returned to Britain to set up the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell, charged with developing Britain's atomic power programme. He became the first director of AERE. Even when leaving the post, he continued to be involved with Harwell. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1944, knighted in 1948, and created Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1953.

In post-war years, AERE under his direction took part in frontier fusion research, including the ZETA program.