May 27

If the planet, yes our planet, is ever consumed by a mushroom cloud, you can thank John Douglas Cockcroft (pictured). He was born on the 27th in 1897. He was a very bright and talented English physicist. In 1928 be began working with a similarly gifted Irish physicist, Ernest Walton. Isn’t it nice that these smart guys had someone to hang around with? The pair began fooling around, trying to see how they could annoy protons. Sometimes when people hang out with the wrong crowd they get into all kinds of trouble that they had not thought about. It’s the same old story, you try marijuana because all the other kids in school are and you want to hang out with the cool kids. The next thing you know, you are addicted to heroin and chopping people into little bits. That sort of the way it works with physicists. Some guy in the lab starts bombarding inert gases with protons and you want to try it too. Before you know it, you are bombarding lithium with protons and you’re splitting the atom, ultimately giving the world the atomic bomb. Were these guys grounded for a whole week? Nope. Were they even sent to bed without dinner? No! For some reason they were both given the Nobel Prize for physics.