As you can see, the physical ability the physics department here in Trinity College, Dublin, where Ernest Walton many would say, I think, with very little argument, the most important or the most famous the most prestigious Irish physicist is being because he split the atom was the first person to split.

The Artemis was the first person, along with Crock Croft Thio verify These equal M.

C squared is right.

He cleared the way for nuclear energy, paved the way for or understanding of the nucleus.

He did a at the time what was just a remarkable achievement, which was to target the nucleus to target the nucleus with protons on that nucleus.

That at the time it was said it was like trying to target a gnat in the cathedral to train and get down, because the nucleus is at 1,000,000 times smaller than the atom.

So you're really trying to fire, and that's not what they were very keen to see.

Its splitting the atom is sort of easy.

What they were doing a split nucleus, and they were finding that nucleus which is embedded at the heart of the atom.

He hey went to work with bold effort in the confidential of origin Cambridge.

And that's where he did.

It's his experiments.

He built up accelerators, particle accelerators.

The first generations particle accelerators came from Cockcroft on Walton.

They work very close together.

Cockcroft more on the theoretical side.

Walton was an incredibly talented experimentalist, extremely good with his hands working with bits of copper and metal and glass.

And apparently key aspects of the kids were held together with plaster scene.

So we're gonna go inside into this wonderful historic building We're gonna meet somebody called Professor Ignatius McGovern, who was not only had the honor off, having an office beside Walton was actually had the dishonor of the opposite of owner of actually being external examiner for my PhD faces.

So he knows exactly how little physics I actually know.

So let's go and see.

80.

This this actually is where Walton's office waas.

So as you can see, obviously there's a different incumbent in there.

Now, unfortunately, we can't get in, which is a bit frustrating, but we're gonna go and see your, you know.

Well, this used to be the big teaching lab in in this building.

This building is from 19 or five.

So it was really a modern building of its time.

And this is where the particles were carried out.

Very large room, but it has been to some extent, carved up a little bit for officers on in Behind me.

Directly behind me is a very famous office.

This is a professor of Walton's office in his retirement.

20 is a strong tradition of keeping its scholars, if you like staying on after they retired, contributing and big and small ways.

But being about the place, Well, my mind is my office is in the corner here, also part of this carve up.

But it's a very sort of flimsy carve up so you could actually conversations car through these walls.

We have to be really careful about what we say.

Equally you can hear everything that's around noises.

For example.

At one stage, we, the trendy college didn't have many many phone lines in this building way shared a phone line.

Professor Walton I chair and whoever got to the full on first would be the person who answered so I would Casely here.

I'm saying he's not here.

You would accidentally be sharing phone calls with Yes, yes, when he was getting me, but it was getting a better class of phone call.

Here's a great, great story about Walter, not our genial host, Professor Ignatius McGovern told us, just just when we arrived him.

So Walton was lecturing at the board one day in this theater, in this very, very theater.

Andi was writing on the board something, and he heard this, like Click Click.

What had happened is that somebody back in the audience had dropped the ball bearing on the ball.

Bearing was rolling down these stairs.

And so Walton finished whatever he was writing, walked over here.

He picked up the ball bearing wherever it was.

He woke back up these stairs and he placed on exactly the desk that it came from.

And he said to the person sitting in the end, a whisper to him, Don't do that again.

Obviously, he'd come to the hops off the ball, bearing down the steps while he was doing probably quite complex deprivation on the board at the same time.

I love that story, but the great thing about Walton is all that all the biographies you read of Walton?

Ah, wonderful scientist, but really, really humble.

Really.

Didn't you know?

You know, strive to take the credit for things actually had to be fore side into the limelight, bought at the same time.

Generally find when people are sort of perhaps humble like that they tend to be quite introverted, withdrawn.

But what was a really phenomenally good lecturer?

Really, really, really good?

Generations of students attest to that.

And he was incredibly well loved here on the humility of the man I think was, you know, people would come into the staff room, the common room here, Walton would be sitting in the corner and people couldn't believe that the person they were talking to, you know, was split the atom.

You know, he was the guy along with Cockcroft on DDE.

Hey, was you know, he didn't let all that go to his head.

Well, I think the first you know, the first contact with them and first meeting him was was a little bit overwhelming.

But he came to coffee every every morning like everybody else.

And after a few weeks, then I kind of got used to the idea that E.

T s, as we called him was just part of the part of the part of the crowd.

Or he was also known as the we prop.

Uh, that's just affection.

Yes, he was.

Yes, he was.

He wasn't a toll.

It wasn't told, you know, he had Bean the prophet, and then he had retired and someone else became the prophet, so he became the wee problem.

Okay, So other than trying not to over here is telephone conversations.

Like what?

I couldn't help hearing the little noises that were coming through the wall because E.

T s was on experimentalist on.

He'd like to tinker with bits and pieces of apparatus in particular, old pieces of apparatus that he used in demonstration lectures on these often involved electrostatic generating machines.

Machines like that.

The winds Hearst machine something a juicer disk into propelled Iran on it picked up electrostatic charge, created a spark so I could hear this sort of wearing and then this spark the crack of the spark.

But I suppose what we're doing, we're inching towards the this idea of writing a poem about E.

T s Walton and I.

That's one of the things I do here in physics.

I write poetry sometimes about signs, sometimes about other things on.

So I was asked to write a poem on the occasion off the plaque that you may have seen on the building downstairs Commemorating E.

T s.

Walton.

So thinking about what should I write about?

Uh, you might say maybe a difficult subject, because he was a very quiet on the swimming man.

But what I head upon for my poem to a combination of two things one was the little noises coming through the wall.

You know, little Smikle flee off the discharge from the women's first machine on even bigger noise, if you like.

Which, of course, was the awarding off the Nobel Prize on In that context, the idea off splitting the atom and when that was a nice that they had split the atom.

There was a cartoon in one of the British newspapers showing the boys with a gigantic mallet splitting the Adam.

So the noise and the combination of that cartoon became that kind of a theme on you, like on Hummers on the poem is called Hammer on spark.

Well, you're in my office, which is the next door to E.

T s Walton's office.

This is the wall.

The flimsy, flimsy wall Hummer on spark, Not the mess proclaiming the glorious news nor the cartoon mallet off the first atom smashers, nor the claw dismantling the timbers for reuse, nor the gavel expanding the laws off student physics, nor the sledge on plowshares for the global village.

Listen.

A gentle topping the pain off the silver Smith, the central ations that be token faith.