ONE of Great Harwood's most famous sons is to feature in an exhibition about pupils of a Blackburn school.

Sir Ernest Marsden, the scientist who unlocked the secret of the atom, is one of several former students of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School whose achievements will be celebrated in an exhibition opening tomorrow.

Born in Hermitage Street in 1889, he attended the Westpark Road school from 1901 to 1906 and went on to make his groundbreaking discoveries as an undergraduate student at Manchester University in 1909.

His discovery that only a tiny part of the atom, rather than the whole, is made up of a charge, led to the birth of nuclear physics.

His painstaking work, mostly carried out in the dark, enabled new mathematical calculations and led to many of the medical advances of the last century, including MRI scanners, which centre around the atoms in a patient's body.

The research also enabled developments which are now in widespread household use, such as computer chips.

Sir Ernest emigrated to New Zealand in his 20s to take up a professorship and became president of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He was knighted in 1958 and died in 1970.

His Rishton origins were only recently discovered by the Institute of Physics, which arranged for a commemorative plaque to mark his birthplace.

Artefacts on display at the forthcoming exhibition will include a silver medal awarded to Sir Ernest by QEGS for the scratch sixes in 1905, donated by his son Dr Ernest Marsden, who lives in New Zealand. Other items will include equipment used in the science laboratory when Marsden was a pupil.

An array of other famous former students will be honoured at the exhibition, including Wayne Hemingway, who found fame in the 1980s as the founder of fashion company Red or Dead, television presenter Russell Harty, former world junior golf champion Nick Dougherty and film-maker Michael Winterbottom, whose recent successes include 24-Hour Party People, about Tony Wilson's Factory Records.

The exhibition will run until April 17 at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Museum Street, Blackburn, and will be open from 10am to 4.45pm Tuesday to Saturday. It will coincide with a reunion weekend for former pupils on March 29 and 30.