Very fine and important autograph of Ernest Rutherford (1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson 1871-1937), one of science's greatest physicists and a pioneer of atomic and nuclear physics. He was born in Nelson, New Zealand and studied at Christchurch University before moving to Cambridge, England in 1895. He became professor of Physics at McGill, Canada where he proposed that radioactivity results from the disintegration of atoms. In 1919 he became professor at Cambridge and director of the University's Cavendish Laboratory. He has been called the greatest experimentalist since Faraday and he discovered the concept of radiation half-life, the radioactive element Radon, and differentiated alpha and beta radiation. He performed the first artificially induced nuclear reaction and as a result, discovered the Proton. Under his direction at Cavendish, he also oversaw the discovery of the Neutron and the 'splitting of the atom". Known as the 'Father of Nuclear Physics', he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. He is buried in Westminster Abbey next to Darwin and Newton.