But what atoms were made of no one knew. One common view was that they were something like tough and shiny ball bearings: mighty glowing entities that no one could see inside. It was only with the research of Ernest Rutherford, a great, booming bear of a man working at England's Manchester University, in the period around 1910, that anyone got a clearer view. Rutherford was at Manchester, rather than at Oxford or Cambridge, not just because he was from rural New Zealand, and spoke with a common man's accent. If a research assistant was self-effacing enough, that could be overlooked. The problem rather was that when Rutherford had been a student at Cambridge he had refused to show proper deference to his superiors. He'd even suggested creating a joint-venture business to earn money from one of his inventions—and that was a mortal sin. Yet the reason he became the scientist who got the first clear glimpse of the inside of atoms was, to a large extent, because his heightened awareness of discrimination made him the kindest leader of men.
