Ernest Rutherford and the Birth of Modern PhysicsAlbert Einstein called Ernest Rutherford a 'second Newton'. In just a few dramatic decades from the late nineteenth century, scientists upended what we thought we knew about the world around us, opening up a universe of waves, particles, and forces that enabled radical new inventions from radio to TV, X ray machines to smoke detectors. A key mover of this new wave of science was Ernest Rutherford, a no nonsense New Zealander who became known as the