Donald Trump Angers New Zealanders With Bizarre Claim About ‘Splitting the Atom’- wna24
Donald Trump Angers New Zealanders With Bizarre Claim About ‘Splitting the Atom’ | Image:
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New Delhi, India: US President Donald Trump has sparked outrage in New Zealand following a statement during his second-term inauguration speech in Washington, D.C., where he credited the United States with splitting the atom—an achievement that belongs to Sir Ernest Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand.
In a speech touting America’s historical accomplishments, Trump said, “Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness, they crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the wild west, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.”
This claim about splitting the atom, however, quickly stirred anger in New Zealand, where Rutherford is celebrated as a national hero. Rutherford’s groundbreaking work in nuclear physics, which led to the first successful splitting of the atom in 1917, is an achievement long recognized as a milestone in scientific history. Rutherford, a native of New Zealand, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research and is known as the “father of nuclear physics.”
New Zealand Reactions
Nick Smith, Mayor of Nelson—the city where Rutherford was born—took to social media to express his disbelief.
“I was a bit surprised by new president Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans split the atom when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford,” Smith wrote on Facebook.
He added that, to “keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate,” he would be summoning the US Ambassador to New Zealand to visit the Lord Rutherford Memorial at Brightwater, near Nelson.
Editor Ben Uffindell of the satirical news site The Civilian also voiced his dismay. “Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom. That’s THE ONE THING WE DID,” he tweeted, underscoring the anger of many New Zealanders who pride themselves on Rutherford’s accomplishments.
Who Was Sir Ernest Rutherford?
Rutherford, born to a farming family in New Zealand, carried out pivotal atomic research in the UK and Canada. In 1917, he split the atom for the first time at Victoria University of Manchester, an achievement for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Later, in 1932, under Rutherford’s leadership at the University of Cambridge, British and Irish scientists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton successfully split the atom again, solidifying Rutherford’s status as a foundational figure in nuclear physics.
Rutherford’s influence remains deeply embedded in New Zealand, where his name adorns streets, buildings, and institutions. His legacy as one of history’s greatest scientists is fiercely upheld by New Zealanders, and the claim that America, rather than Rutherford, split the atom has triggered an outcry.
This isn’t the first time Trump has made a controversial claim about America’s role in nuclear history. In 2020, during a speech at Mount Rushmore, he similarly credited the U.S. for splitting the atom, a statement that also drew widespread criticism.
While the United States did indeed develop and test the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, the achievement of splitting the atom itself is attributed to Rutherford’s pioneering research, not America.