 The thesis was good enough , though , for Burhop to be awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at Cambridge University 's Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford in 1933 . The scholarship included a first @-@ class ticket to London on the liner RMS Oronsay . 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 . Burhop was supervised by a fellow Australian , Mark Oliphant . He was initially assigned a task of investigating the diffusion of positive alkali metal ions on hot metal surfaces , but soon switch to a more interesting subject , the measurement of the excitation function for the pairs of deuterons producing a triton through nuclear fusion : 
