Trump claims that the United States “split the atom.” New Zealand says that is not true.

The mayor of a small New Zealand town has started a nuclear fight with Donald Trump, after the newly sworn-in US president praised US scientists for splitting the atom.

Mr. Trump’s Inauguration Speech He rattled off a list of major American feats, including ending slavery, launching into space and the time they “split the atom.”

The mayor of Nelson, on New Zealand’s South Island, seized on the subatomic snub, noting that work on splitting the atom was actually started by New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford.

“I was a little surprised that new President Donald Trump in his inaugural speech about America’s greatness claimed that Americans today ‘split the atom’ when that honor belongs to Nelson’s most famous and favorite son, Sir Ernest Rutherford. “said Mayor Nick Smith. wrote on social media.

Rutherford is credited with splitting the nucleus of an atom during experiments at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom in 1917, and was “the first to artificially induce a nuclear reaction by bombarding nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles,” Smith said.

He added that he would invite the incoming US ambassador to visit the Rutherford memorial in Nelson, population 50,000, “so that we can keep an accurate historical record of who split the atom first.”

Ben Uffindell, editor of a New Zealand satirical news website called The Civilian, also took issue with Trump’s claim.

“Okay, I have to call time. Trump just claimed that America split the atom. That’s THE ONLY THING WE DID,” Uffindell. wrote on social media.

Widely regarded as the “father of nuclear physics”, Rutherford received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for earlier work on radioactivity.

While Rutherford is credited with the initial splitting of the atom, Englishman John Cockcroft and Irishman Ernest Walton later performed the first controlled experiment to split an atomic nucleus, according to the US Department of Energy.

Rutherford remains one of New Zealand’s most famous sons and his face still graces the country’s $100 bill.