Nobel Prize Recipient in Physics. Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, an Anglo-Irish physicist, received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing the coveted award with John Douglas Cockcroft. According to the Nobel Prize committee, the two physicists jointly received the award "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles." He received eight nominations from 1937 for the Nobel candidacy and nominated other physicists for the Nobel Prize. Born into a Methodist pastor's home, his mother Annie Sinton, a Quaker, died the August before he was three years old. His father John Arthur Walton eventually became president of the Methodist church in Ireland. At age twelve, he was sent to be a boarder at Methodist College, Belfast, where he excelled in science and mathematics, and on a mathematics scholarship, he entered Trinity College in Dublin, graduating with a Masters in Science Degree in 1927. While at Trinity College, he received seven honors in mathematics and science. He received a Research Scholarship by the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 to work under Nobel Prize recipient, Sir Ernest Rutherford, at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1930, and received his Ph.D. in 1931 where his research earned him the Nobel Prize. By April 14, 1932 he and Cockcroft had developed a device, an accelerator, to generate more penetrating radiation by using a strong electric field and protons for high velocities. At that point, they bombarded lithium with protons, causing their nuclei to split and producing two alpha particles. Starting in 1928, working alone with little funding, he had attempted twice to develop the generate to split the atom but failed. By 1929 Cockcroft became his partner after Rutherford, who believed in Walton's theory, funded their experiments. The device became to be known as the Cockcroft-Walton Generator. He was a Clerk Maxwell Scholar from 1932 to 1934 when he returned to Trinity College in Dublin, as a Fellow, remaining that position for forty years. He was Erasmus Smith professor of natural and experimental philosophy from 1946 to 1974 and chairman of the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies after 1952, remaining there the rest of his career and retiring at the age of 71. Having a talent for informative lectures, he was a highly respected professor by his students. He published numerous papers in the scientific journals on the subjects of hydrodynamics, nuclear physics, and microwaves. Outside the scientific community, he was very active on church and governmental committees. Exercising his strong Christian faith, he even gave lectures about the relationship of science and religion in several countries after he won the Nobel Prize. He was awarded the Hughes Medal, jointly with Sir John Cockcroft, by the Royal Society of London in 1938, and in 1959 he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Queen's University, Belfast. Along with several scholarships awarded in his honor, there is now a Walton Building at Methodist College in Belfast. In 1934 he married the daughter of a Methodist pastor and the couple had two sons and three daughters. Both sons became physicists. He was 91 when he died.