Nuclear reaction Common light particles are often abbreviated in this shorthand, typically p for proton, n for neutron, d for deuteron, α representing an alpha particle or helium-4, β for beta particle or electron, γ for gamma photon, etc. The reaction above would be written as Li-6(d,α)α. In 1919, Ernest Rutherford was able to accomplish transmutation of nitrogen into oxygen at the University of Manchester, using alpha particles directed at nitrogen N + α → O + p. This was the first observation of an induced nuclear reaction, that is, a reaction in which particles from one decay are used to transform
Nuclear transmutation John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who used artificially accelerated protons against lithium-7 to split the nucleus into two alpha particles. The feat was popularly known as "splitting the atom," although it was not the modern nuclear fission reaction discovered in 1938 by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and their assistant Fritz Strassmann in heavy elements. Later in the twentieth century the transmutation of elements within stars was elaborated, accounting for the relative abundance of heavier elements in the universe. Save for the first five elements, which were produced in the Big Bang and other cosmic ray processes, stellar nucleosynthesis accounted for