KEY POINTS:
An Auckland University student will be using the science scholarship she was awarded today through the Rutherford Foundation to take a close look at the mentality of birds.
Rachael Shaw was one of two recipients awarded the scholarship by the national science academy.
She is going to carry out doctoral research on Californian jays at Cambridge University, in an effort to unravel the psychology of "mental time travel" in a bird.
She will study consciousness and memory, contributing to the field of evolutionary biology and psychology .
The other scholarship was awarded to engineering graduate George Gordon, who had studied ways to connect information from independent electronic sources in an "intelligent airport" using fibre optic and radio frequency technologies.
The doctoral scholarships at Cambridge mark yesterday's 100th anniversary of Ernest Rutherford receiving the Nobel Prize.
The announcement was made by the Royal Society of New Zealand president, Neville Jordan, at the New Zealand High Commission in London.
The foundation said the two Auckland University students had both shown exceptional academic ability, and each had clearly defined research projects and supervisors available for their PhD studies at Cambridge.
Professor Paul Callaghan, convenor of the Rutherford Foundation selection panel, said both the students would be ambassadors for New Zealand science, and both had a strong desire to make their careers in New Zealand.
The foundation was a charitable trust set up by the Royal Society to fund education and research for young academics.
Cambridge University will be cutting its fees by half for the two students.
Rutherford was awarded a scholarship in 1894 which enabled him to attend Cambridge.
Known as the "father of nuclear energy", Rutherford was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1908, for the discovery that elements are not immutable, but can change their structure naturally, from heavy elements to slightly lighter.
This natural radioactive decay of atomic nuclei not only changed scientific thinking, but was the basis for radiocarbon dating that proved the Earth's age.
His second major discovery, in 1907, that some particles shot at paper-thin sheets of gold leaf bounced off, revealed a nuclear structure of mostly empty space, with electrons orbiting an incredibly dense nucleus at the centre.
He went on to split the atom, in 1917, by converting nitrogen atoms into oxygen, forcing the transformation and creating the nuclear age.
Lord Rutherford died in 1937, from hernia complications aged 66.
- NZPA
