In simple terms, that assertion is correct, but for those with an expertise in the field, the longer answer to who did it ...

The term "splitting the atom" isn't the most descriptive way of explaining what Rutherford, along with John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, actually achieved; splitting apart a nucleus by bombarding ...

Scientists based in Manchester, not the US, made the "key breakthrough" in splitting the atom, despite Donald Trump's claims in his inaugural speech, says a lecturer at one of the city's universities.

The mayor of Nelson in New Zealand's South Island seized on the subatomic slight, pointing out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by Kiwi-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.

In his Inaugural Address, Trump credited Americans with splitting the atom, an achievement credited by many to pioneering physicist Ernest Rutherford of New Zealand.

The claim sparked backlash from officials and social media users in across the country, with many asserting that Rutherford's groundbreaking work is a source of national pride. Ernest Rutherford ...

writing that he was “a bit surprised” by Trump’s claim “when that honour belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favourite son,” the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford.

Ernest Rutherford, a Nobel Prize winner known as the father of nuclear physics, is regarded by many as the first to knowingly split the atom by artificially inducing a nuclear reaction in 1917 ...

FILE - British scientists Dr. E.T.S. Walton, left, and Dr. F.D. Cockroft, right, stand with Lord Rutherford outside the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, U.K, May 2 ...