Showing results for "Richard Reeves" in Biographies & Memoirs

Ernest Rutherford, who grew up in colonial New Zealand and came to Cambridge on a scholarship, made numerous revolutionary discoveries, among them the orbital structure of the atom and the concept of the “half-life” of radioactive materials, which led to a massive re-evaluation of the age of the Earth―previously judged just 100 million years old. Above all, perhaps, Rutherford and the young men working under him were the first to split the atom, unlocking tremendous forces―forces, as Rutherford himself predicted, that would bring us the atomic bomb.

Syndicated columnist and biographer Richard Reeves and Pakistani novelist and New Yorker writer Moshin Hamid on this edition of Fresh Air. Richard Reeves' most recent book is President Nixon: Alone in the White House. He's also written books about Presidents Reagan, Kennedy, Clinton, and Ford. Reeves lived in Pakistan during the 1980s.