In simple terms, that assertion is correct, but for those with an expertise in the field, the longer answer to who did it ...

Scientists based in Manchester, not the US, made the "key breakthrough" in splitting the atom, despite Donald Trump's claims in his inaugural speech, says a lecturer at one of the city's universities.

When Donald Trump claimed US scientists split the atom in his inaugural speech, even he could not have imagined the chain reaction of online debate his boast would cause. Many of those leaping on ...

The term "splitting the atom" isn't the most descriptive way of explaining what Rutherford, along with John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, actually achieved; splitting apart a nucleus by bombarding ...

Ernest Rutherford (right) and Hans Geiger led the experiments in Manchester Scientists based in Manchester, not the US, made the "key breakthrough" in splitting the atom, despite Donald Trump's ...

In his Inaugural Address, Trump credited Americans with splitting the atom, an achievement credited by many to pioneering physicist Ernest Rutherford of New Zealand.

The mayor of Nelson in New Zealand's South Island seized on the subatomic slight, pointing out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by Kiwi-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.

When Donald Trump claimed US scientists split the atom in his inaugural speech, even he could not have imagined the chain reaction of online debate his boast would cause. Many of those leaping on it ...

Ernest Rutherford, a Nobel Prize winner known as the father of nuclear physics, is regarded by many as the first to knowingly split the atom by artificially inducing a nuclear reaction in 1917 ...