Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was born in a farmhouse at Brightwater, and he became the major pioneer in nuclear physics. On his 4th return visit to New Zealand in 1925, when his election as President of the Royal Society of London was announced, that farmhouse had been demolished.

A pigsty got built on the site, and in 1954 a shabby concrete plaque was mounted by the road outside the pigsty, announcing that Ernest Rutherford had been born there. In 1971 some friends and relatives of Rutherford bought the land, evicted the pigs, and presented the land to the nation as the site for a monument to Rutherford. That land was entrusted to the Waimea County Council which, for the following 19 years, fulfilled its trust by using the site as a gravel dump.

John Campbell is a physicist at the University of Canterbury who campaigned successfully for the New Zealand $100 banknote (since 1992) to feature Rutherford., and he has written and published the major biography "Rutherford, Scientist Supreme", AAS Publications, Christchurch, 1999. (ISBN 0-473-05700-X). In 1990 he arranged for a worthy memorial to be built on Rutherford's birthsite, and that Rutherford Birthsite Memorial was opened by the Governor-General on 1991 December 6. That ceremony was attended by many of Rutherford's relatives, his colleague Sir Mark Oliphant came from Adelaide, many other scientists came from around the world, and the High Commissioners of the UK and of Canada attended.

That most impressive monument appears to have been inspired by the Temple of Earth in Beijing. The memorial is a mound about 40m diameter with 3 marble-walled cylinders mounted on top of one another (diameters decreasing upwards), surmounted by a bronze statue of a little boy running, holding an Arithmetic Primer under his arm. The monument presents efectively much reliable information about Rutherford.

Do not miss visiting that monument.