Ernest Lawrence a scrap of a paper napkin. While sitting in the library one evening in 1929, Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe, and was intrigued by one of the diagrams. This depicted a device that produced high-energy particles by means of a succession of small "pushes". The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes. At the time, physicists were beginning to explore the atomic nucleus. In 1919, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford had fired alpha particles into nitrogen and had succeeded in knocking protons out of some of the nuclei. But
Pirkko Eskola using the Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator, bombarding a target of californium-249 with nitrogen nuclei. There was debate between Russia and America over who first discovered of Rutherfordium. Erkola studied the alpha decay of Nobelium 255 and 257. She went on to work on beta-unstable Alpha particle emitting nuclei. Using Alpha-particle spectroscopy she studied lawrencium isotopes 255 - 260 and Mendelevium isotopes 248 - 252. Her husband, Kari Eskola, was a professor of physics at the University of Helsinki. She went on to have a career in science education. She was an editor of the Finnish Physical Society journal "Physica Fennica".