I am a New Zealander by birth. In 1895, when I was 23 years old, holding three degrees from the University of New Zealand, I left my country for England and the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University. By 1898, I had come to Canada. The physical laboratory at McGill University in Montreal was one of the best buildings of its kind in the world and had a magnificent range of equipment. Eventually, however, I found Montreal to be too far away from the principal centres of scientific research and I needed more research students than were available. So, when an opportunity at Manchester University in England was offered to me, I decided in 1907 to leave McGill. Later, in 1919, I returned to the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge as its head.

Although I am a physicist, I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for my investigation into the disintegration of the elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances. This work was done in Canada while I was at McGill, making me the first person to receive a Nobel Prize for work completed in Canada.

Science has no national boundaries, however. My work in Canada and England, as a New Zealander, has received international recognition. I have explained that radioactivity is the spontaneous disintegration of atoms, and I proposed a method of determining the age of a mineral sample through rate of decay. I have studied and determined the structure of the atom, (discovering its nucleus), and finally, I have "split" the atom (converting nitrogen to oxygen by bombarding it with alpha particles, also known as helium nuclei). And I also discovered radon while working at McGill with my first research student, Harriet Brooks.

When I died, my ashes were placed in London's Westminster Abbey in Scientists Corner of the Nave where other great scientists are buried or commemorated including Newton, Faraday, Kelvin and J.J. Thompson. The latter had led the Cavendish lab when I first arrived in England, so many years before