Cockcroft, Sir John Douglas (1897-1967), a British nuclear physicist, won the 1951 Nobel Prize in physics with Ernest T. S. Walton for being first to disintegrate atomic nuclei with artificially accelerated particles. In 1932, Cockcroft and Walton bombarded lithium nuclei with high-speed protons, producing two helium nuclei in the reaction. During World War II (1939-1945), Cockcroft ran an atomic research laboratory near Montreal, Canada. After the war, he led the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment. In 1959, he became the first head of Churchill College of Cambridge University. In 1961, he won the Atoms for Peace Award. He was born in Todmorden, near Huddersfield.
