On this day 128 years ago, on May 27, 1897 (April 26, 1897 lunar calendar), British physicist John Coccroft was born. John Coccroft became the first person to split an atom mechanically. British physicist John Coccroft achieved the first artificial nuclear splitting in 1932. Coccroft was born in Todmorden, England on May 27, 1897. He entered the University of Manchester in England in 1914 to study mathematics, but joined the army the following year. After the First World War, he apprenticed at Metropolitan Vickers Engineering Company. The company sent him to Manchester Polytechnic to study electrical engineering. He later entered Cambridge University, graduated from the Department of Mathematics, and became a member of the Ernest-Rutherford group at the Cavendish Laboratory. Before long, Korcroft became interested in designing a device to accelerate protons, and together with Walton, he built a high-pressure device. They used this device to accelerate protons to bombard lithium nuclei, and in 1932 they achieved the first artificial nuclear division. For this work, Korcroft and Walton shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics. During World War II, Korcroft played a leading role in the development of radar. In 1940 he visited the United States to negotiate the exchange of military, scientific, and technical intelligence. In 1944 he became the head of the British-Canadian Atomic Energy Commission. In 1946 he returned to England and became director of the newly established Atomic Energy Research Institute in Harwell. In 1959 he became director of Churchill College, Cambridge, a new college specializing in science and technology. In 1948, Cockroft was knighted. He died in Cambridge, England in 1967.