Submitted by admin on April 22, 2009 - 21:47
MARSDEN, Sir Ernest, C.M.G., C.B.E., M.C., F.R.S.
(1889– ).
Physicist.
Ernest Marsden was born at Rishton, Lancashire, on 19 February 1889 and educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Blackburn, and the University of Manchester, where he studied under Lord Rutherford. He held a fellowship at Manchester University from 1911 to 1914, when he became professor of physics at Victoria University of Wellington (1914–22). During this period he served overseas with the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force, was mentioned in dispatches, and received the M.C. From 1922 to 1926 he was Assistant Director of Education, but in the latter year was appointed Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. On his retirement in 1946 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London and became in 1947 president of the New Zealand Royal Society. He is a member of the Board of Science and Art, the New Zealand Nuclear Science Committee, and is a guest research worker at the Dominion Physical Laboratory (Lower Hutt) and the Royal Cancer Hospital (London). Marsden was knighted C.M.G. (1946). He holds the degrees of D.Sc., Manchester, and hon. D.Sc., Oxford, as well as other awards. In May 1965 Victoria University of Wellington conferred on Marsden an honorary doctorate of science.