Places of Ernest Rutherford's life
Christchurch (NZ)
Pictures:
Cathedral Square circa 1900 - Source: tepapa.gov..nz
Canterbury College: the "Great Hall" on Rolleston Avenue - Source: canterburystories.nz
The physics department of Canterbury College when Rutherford worked there - Source: Archives New Zealand
Aerial view and map and of the Banks Peninsula. Sources: Wikipedia and Backpack-newzealand
St-Paul de Papanui Church - Source: pxhere
Main cities in New Zealand today. - Source: Out There / Explore New-Zealand
Main city of the South Island of New Zealand, Christchurch hosted Ernest Rutherford between 1890 and 1895.
It was there that he did his higher education, that he obtained his first diplomas. But it was especially there that he made the two most important discoveries of his life: research, thanks to his professor of physics and chemistry, the original Alexander Bickerton; and love, thanks to the more conformist May Newton .
He left in the fall of 1895 for Cambridge and did not return until 1900, when he now held a post in Montreal .
This return will be his last single trip: he gets married at the end of June and leaves with May to begin their family life in Canada.
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The peculiarity of this region, like all of New Zealand in general, is the youth of its history.
The city of Christchurch was officially founded by the British in 1848 (which makes it, moreover, the oldest city founded by the Europeans, even if the Maori had already occupied the place since the 13th century).
The city had a little less than 1,500 inhabitants at its creation, but its population grew rapidly: at the birth of Ernest Rutherford in 1871, they were just over 12,000, but 47,000 when he entered university in 1890 and 57,000 in the year of his marriage, ten years later.
(Source: NZ Census / Te Ara | The Encyclopedia of New Zealand )
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Canterbury University is also recent, since it was created in 1873, two years after Ernest was born. He also had as a teacher the three founders, including Alexander Bickerton.
To compare, the University of Cambridge was founded in 1209.
Exterior and interior views of the Department of Physics and Chemistry at the University of Christchurch (Canterbury College), in which Ernest Rutherford made his first experiments on the magnetization of iron by electric discharges, under the supervision of Alexander Bickerton.
The usual name of the building was "the tin shed", if one was more interested in its crude aspect or the, "domain of stinks" if one referred to the presence of the chemistry rooms.
From his first years of research in these premises, Ernest kept a strong taste for "do-it-yourself" experimental set-ups requiring minimum expenditure (which was not always to the liking of the members of his teams... who nevertheless had to get used to it).
The Banks Peninsula originated from a volcano. Christchurch is located to the north, in a marshy plain. It is precisely the nature of the soil that makes the port not in the city, but in a bay of the peninsula, deep and stable. The port city is called Lyttelton and is separated from the city by a low assembly line, but which nevertheless constitutes a natural obstacle. A tunnel under the Port Hills has allowed a railway to connect the two towns since 1867.
It was through this port, tunnel and train station pictured here that Ernest returned to Christchurch in the spring of 1900 to get married.
Christchurch is the largest orange circle on the South Island (although it remains small compared to Auckland).
To give an idea, the top 5 cities of the country in 2018 have the following numbers of inhabitants:
Nelson (South Island), capital of the region where Ernest was born and city where he lived his high school years is 9th, with 67,000 inhabitants.
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Source: Out There / Travel in New-Zealand
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For more on Ernest Rutherford's early years, check out the very extensive site of John Campbell, who himself taught physics at the University of Canterbury.