On 27 February, 1932, the article “Possible Existence of a Neutron” by the English physicist James Chadwick was published in the journal “Nature”. In this article, Chadwick suggested that the alpha particles which this radiation consists of are heavy uncharged particles which the atomic nucleus consists of and for the first time, estimated their mass. Three years later, in 1935, Chadwick was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of a new fundamental brick of the universe, which atoms and molecules consist of, namely, for the discovery of the so-called neutron,” Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics Professor Pleijel explained in his speech at the awarding ceremony. And he added, "Intuition, thought and logic, together with the art of the experiment, allowed Professor Chadwick to prove the occurrence of a neutron and to establish its properties."

The discovery of a neutron allowed overcoming the difficulties that stand in the way of learning the structure of the atomic nucleus and stimulated the development of the fundamental areas of science, such as the atomic nucleus physics, the elementary particle physics. Subsequently, neutron physics became an independent area.