 In 1929 , with the benefit of an Aitchison travelling scholarship from the University of Melbourne , Massey went to Trinity College , Cambridge to perform research at the Cavendish Laboratory led by Ernest Rutherford . The scholarship expired after two years , but he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship in 1931 . At this time the Cavendish Laboratory was one of the leading centres of physics in the world . In 1932 Cavendish laboratory scientists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atomic nucleus , James Chadwick discovered the neutron , and Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini confirmed the existence of the positron . 
