The tale of splitting the atom isn't just about America—it's a journey from New Zealand to Manchester, led by the brilliant mind of Ernest Rutherford, the true father of nuclear physics.

The mayor of a New Zealand city has rubbished an eyebrow-raising claim made by President Donald Trump during his wild inauguration speech.

U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration in an inauguration speech that Americans "split the atom" prompted vexed social media posts on Tuesday by New Zealanders, who said the achievement belonged to a pioneering scientist revered in his homeland.

The president’s inauguration address rattled off a list of other crowning American feats such as ending slavery and launching into space.

The Donald Trump lie that upset New Zealanders the most - Trump gets called out on social media for repeating erroneous claim during inauguration speech

After President Trump's claim, a mayor in New Zealand pointed out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by physicist Ernest Rutherford.

Mayor Nick Smith said that he would invite the incoming US ambassador to visit the Rutherford memorial in Nelson 'so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate'.

A small town mayor in New Zealand has picked a nuclear fight with Donald Trump, after the freshly sworn-in US president heaped praise on American scientists for splitting the atom.

The president repeated false claims related to the 2020 US election in addition to unfounded allegations against immigration. View on euronews

“Okay, I’ve gotta call time. Trump just claimed America split the atom. That’s THE ONE THING WE DID,” Uffindell wrote on social media. Widely regarded as the “father of nuclear physics,” Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908 for earlier work on radioactivity.

Physicists from both New Zealand and Britain have been credited with splitting the atom — but there is consensus that it was not an American.