April 14, 1932: Cockcroft and Walton Split the Atom.

Where was the first splitting of the atom?

Nearly a third said the atom was first split in Geneva, Switzerland (32%) with only 12% correctly identifying Manchester, where Ernest Rutherford produced the first artificially-induced nuclear reaction at his laboratory in 1917.

How did Ernest Walton split the atom?

Using enormously high voltages -- 700,000 volts -- Walton bombarded a piece of lithium with fast particles, splitting the lithium into helium atoms or "alpha particles," which he later described as looking like "twinkling stars." This was the first ever experiment to split the atom.