Cavendish Professor of Physics the university regulations which allowed students who had not studied at Cambridge to receive a B.A. by submitting a thesis which was judged "of distinction as a record of original research." Among the students attracted by this change was future Cavendish Professor Ernest Rutherford. Whilst Thomson was Cavendish Professor, he discovered the electron and the existence of isotopes, and also fostered an atmosphere of friendliness and mutual helpfulness. Rutherford returned to Cambridge in 1918, and spent the last 19 years of his life there. This was around the time of the change from classical to modern physics, and Rutherford was
University of Chicago Studies. The university currently enrolls 5,971 undergraduate students and 16,016 students overall. University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of many academic disciplines, including sociology, law, economics, literary criticism, religion and the behavioralism school of political science. Chicago's physics department and the Met Lab helped develop the world's first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction (Chicago Pile-1) beneath the viewing stands of university's Stagg Field, a key part of the classified Manhattan Project effort of World War II. The university research efforts include administration of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as the