A statue of Nobel laureate Lord Ernest Rutherford was stolen last week. The chase with the police ended in a freezing river.
Brightwater – A stolen statue of nuclear physicist Lord Ernest Rutherford has been recovered thanks to the valiant efforts of a New Zealand police officer. Official Jamie White said the only way to catch the thief was to jump into Brightwater’s freezing river, into which the man had fled.
New Zealand: Statue of a Nobel Prize winner stolen
The statue of the Nobel Prize winner was stolen last Friday (August 5) in Lord Ernst Rutherford’s birthplace. Only the feet of the statue remained on the base. Footage from surveillance cameras showed the thief fleeing with the heavy metal figure on a bicycle. The stolen statue shows the physicist as a child.
Two days later, while fleeing police, the man jumped into the Wai-iti River in the dead of winter. The policeman Jamie White did the same after him. “To his surprise, I swam after him and caught him,” the police officer told the news agency AFP. He “enjoyed the warm shower afterwards very much”.
Lord Ernest Rutherford: Stolen statue was unharmed
Fortunately, the stolen statue was unharmed and was due to be reunited with her feet on Monday (8 August). The 35-year-old alleged thief was due to appear in court on the same day.
Lord Ernest Rutherford lived from 1871 to 1937 and is considered a co-founder of atomic physics. He played a central role in research into radioactivity. In 1908 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2021, the German Benjamin List received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with a US researcher. (AFP/jsch)
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