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Story: Radioactive minerals

Rutherford and Geiger

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Rutherford and Geiger

Hans Geiger was the German inventor of the Geiger counter, which detects radiation. He is shown here in a laboratory at Manchester with Ernest Rutherford (right), the New Zealand scientist who split the atom. In the 1940s Ernest Marsden, a former student of Rutherford and colleague of Geiger, initiated a search for uranium in New Zealand.

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Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: PAColl-0091-1-011

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Rebecca Priestley, Radioactive minerals – Prospecting for uranium, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/4776/rutherford-and-geiger (accessed 24 June 2026).

Story by Rebecca Priestley, published 2 March 2009.