WELLINGTON, New Zealand — U.S. President Donald Trump made other false and misleading claims in his inauguration speech on Tuesday, including his remark that Americans "split the atom," prompting New Zealanders to take to social media In an angry post, New Zealanders said the achievement belonged to a pioneering scientist revered in New Zealand. his country.

Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, known as the "Father of Nuclear Physics," is considered by many to be the first person to use artificial intelligence in 1917 while working at a university in Manchester, England. A person who intentionally splits atoms by causing a nuclear reaction.

This achievement is also attributed to British scientists John Douglas Cockroft and Irish Ernest Walton, who established the British Experiment in Rutherford in 1932 researchers working in the laboratory. This is not attributable to Americans.

Trump described America's greatness in his inaugural address on Tuesday, including claiming that Americans "crossed deserts, climbed mountains, braved unspeakable dangers, won the Wild West and ended slavery, Saving millions from tyranny, lifting millions out of poverty, harnessing electricity, and dividing the world." The atom brought mankind into the sky and placed the universe of human knowledge in the palm of human hands. "

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Nelson mayor Nick Smith, a Rutherford-born and educated New Zealand politician, said he was "a bit surprised" by the claim.

"Rutherford's pioneering research in radio communications, radioactivity, atomic structure and ultrasonic technology was completed at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester in England and McGill University in Montreal, Canada," Smith wrote on Facebook.

Smith said he would invite the next U.S. ambassador to New Zealand to visit the memorial at Rutherford's birthplace "so we can preserve an accurate historical record of who split the atom first."

A website from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Historical and Heritage Resources attributes the milestone to Cockcroft and Walton, although it describes Rutherford's early achievements in mapping atomic structure, postulating the central nucleus and identifying the proton.

Trump's comments sparked a flurry of online posts about Rutherford from New Zealanders, with New Zealand schoolchildren studying Rutherford's work and his name appearing on buildings, streets and institutions. His likeness appears on the $100 bill.

"Well, I have to call to announce the time. Trump just claimed the United States split the atom," wrote Ben Uffindell, editor of the New Zealand satirical news site The Civilian, on X. That's one thing we do. "