Thursday, January 8, 2015

Ernest Walton €15 silver proof coin on 13 Jan

On 13 January 2015, The Central Bank of Ireland will launch a €15 limited edition silver proof commemorative coin to honour Nobel Laureate Ernest Walton and his ground-breaking achievements in the field of physics.

Walton coin

To mark this occasion, the Central Bank has collaborated with the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition on a special award for 2015 in recognition of Walton’s achievements. The winners of the award will be announced at the Exhibition tomorrow, Friday.

The award winners will receive a coin which was designed by artist Rory Breslin and which has an issue limit of 6,000 units.

Director of Credit Institutions, Sharon Donnery, said, “This is the second in our Science and Invention series and honours one of Ireland’s great Nobel Prize winners, Ernest Walton. Walton, with John Douglas Cockcroft, shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work on the transmutation of a nucleus by artificially accelerated atomic particles. The design on the coin gives an artist’s impression and explanation to the equation we all know, E="mc2. The Central Bank is also delighted to support the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition Awards and young Irish scientists through sponsorship of this award.”

The limited issue coin will be launched on 13 January 2015 and orders will be despatched shortly after the launch. Coins go on sale to the general public from 14 January 2015.

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton (6 October 1903 – 25 June 1995) is Ireland’s only Nobel Laureate for science, he get his Nobel from his work with John Cockcroft with "atom-smashing" experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s, and so became the first person in history to artificially split the atom, thus ushering the nuclear age.

Source: Central bank of Ireland