One of the mysteries of the English language finally explained.
proper noun
1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (1871–1937), New Zealand physicist, regarded as the founder of nuclear physics. As a result of his experiments on the scattering of alpha particles, he proposed that the positive charge in an atom, and virtually all its mass, is concentrated in a central nucleus. He also performed the first artificial transmutation of matter. Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1908).