The discovery of the neutron was made by James Chadwick in 1932. A neutron is a subatomic particle that is found in the nucleus of an atom. It has no electric charge, which makes it different from the other particles in the nucleus, the protons, which are positively charged. Chadwick discovered the neutron through a series of experiments that involved bombarding elements with alpha particles. He was able to show that there were particles in the nucleus that had no charge and concluded that these must be neutrons.