Chadwick attended the University of Manchester
where hestudied
physics under Ernest Rutherford. In his last year
in the program Rutherford assigned Chadwick to
invent a way to compare radioactive energy in two
sources. The methods he discovered were published
in 1912 in a paper co-authored with Rutherford. He
would also earn 1st class honors
graduating in 1911, and received his a
master’s degree in 1912. Upon completing his
master’s degree he proceeded to
Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin to
work under Hans Geiger studying beta radiation. It
was at this time he demonstrated that beta
radiation produced a continuous spectrum with
peaks. He was still in Germany when WWI started
and was sent to a civilian internment camp for the
duration of the war. After the war ended he
returned to England and taught part time while
working on his doctorate at Cambridge, receiving
it in 1921.
