Liffey bridge should bear Nobel scientist’s name

The Institute of Physics is proposing that the new Liffey bridge should be named for Ireland’s only science Nobel Laureate, Ernest Walton (1903-1995).

While working in Cambridge, Dungarvan-born Walton built the first particle accelerator to split the atom in 1932, along with his co-worker John Cockcroft, earning them the 1951 Nobel prize for physics.

This experiment verified Einstein’s famous equation relating mass and energy, E=mc2. Walton was at the birth of modern physics, as carried out in CERN and elsewhere throughout the world.