Lord Rutherford, 1871 - 1937

Abstract

If a new country is peopled with a good stock, its future is assured. Such has been the happy fortune of New Zealand, which to-day justly claims Rutherford as her greatest son. New Zealand was sighted by Tasman and visited by Captain Cook, F.R.S., who stayed long enough to bequeath the flea, the black rat and the pig to the Maoris. The country received its first white settlers in 1817, but the main colonization followed about 1840— less than a hundred years ago! Among the early settlers was one of the Rutherfords, for the most part Scots and a virile border-folk. His son James, and Martha his wife, another New Zealand settler from Sussex, had four sons and eight daughters. Ernest, the second son and fourth child, was born on 30 August, 1871, near Nelson, at Brightwater, and there he went to the State primary school, whence he obtained a scholarship to the Nelson School. About this time his father had moved to Pungarehu, Taranika Province, where he had a flax farm and mill and a rope walk. Rutherford is reported on good authority to have been a normal, happy, unassuming boy, but with unusual powers of concentration — the secret of his success in life. He shot pheasants and wild pigeons, played forward at Rugby football, caught eels and brook trout, nearly drowned himself bathing, took clocks to pieces, made water wheels (like Newton), photographed, loved reading and music; he also won prizes and scholarships for English, History, French, and Latin. He was greatly helped by a good schoolmaster, W . S. Littlejohn, who taught him sound mathematics, and, in a very small class, chemistry and physics.