Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth, nickname of George Herman Ruth (1895-1948). US baseball player, whose outstanding talents and larger than life character did much to popularize the sport in the 1920s. Ruth was brought up in poverty in Baltimore and later went into a boys’ home. He began to play for the Baltimore team while still in his teens and was sold to the Boston Red Sox in 1914: Al-though he achieved record results as a pitcher, his popular fame rested on his aggressive batting. After moving to the New York Yankees in 1919, he took the team to five world series victories. His career total of 714 home runs was not beaten until 1974. He retired in 1936. Away from the pitch Ruth had a reputation for drinking, brawling, and womanizing. Rutherford, Ernest, Baron (1871-1937). New Zealand physicist, whose work formed a basis for the development of nuclear physics. The son of a farmer, he left New Zealand for Britain in 1895. He was professor of physics at McGill University, Montreal (18 then at Manchester (1907 98-1907) . In 1919 he was elected Cavendish professor of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge, At Cambridge he was also director of the Cavendish Laboratory. His most important work was on the nature of radioactivity. It was Rutherford who distinguished between alpha particles (helium nuclei), beta rays (electrons), and gamma rays (short-wave electromagnetic radiation). In 1906, by bombarding gold foil with alpha particles, he was able to deduce that atoms have a central core, which he called the ‘nucleus’. This discovery was of fundamental importance in understanding atomic structure and was the basis of all subsequent nuclear physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908, the OM in 1925, and a peerage in 1931.
