Ernest Rutherford was born on August
30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a
family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James Rutherford, a
Scottish wheelwright, emigrated to New Zealand with Ernest's grandfather
and the whole family in 1842. His mother, née Martha Thompson, was an
English schoolteacher, who, with her widowed mother, also went to live
there in 1855.
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