Ernest Walton

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate who first split the atom. 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 Nobel Prize citation: "Thus, for the first time, a nuclear transmutation was produced by means entirely under human control".

6 October 1903

Born on the same birth day (6 October): Carole Lombard • Caroline Gordon • George Westinghouse • Goh Keng Swee • Hendrik Adamson • Henri Christophe • Janet Gaynor • Jazz Jennings • Lloyd Doggett • Manfred Winkelhock • Matteo Ricci • Mitchell Cole • Muhammad V of Kelantan • Méret Oppenheim • Richard Delgado • Takis Gonias • Tommy Stinson • Tony Dungy

Born in the same month (October 1903): Bona Arsenault • Curly Howard • Ernst Kaltenbrunner • Georgy Geshev • John Vincent Atanasoff • Josephine Hutchinson • Mahn Ba Khaing • Melvin Purvis • Nathanael West • Pierre Veyron • Prince Charles, Count of Flanders • Tor Johnson • Walter O'Malley