Ernest Rutherford is seen broadcasting during a home visit to New Zealand in 1926. ANN RONAN PICTURES/PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES

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

Mr. Trump's inauguration address rattled off a list of crowning American feats such as ending slavery, launching into space, and the moment they "split the atom."

The mayor of Nelson in New Zealand's South Island seized on the subatomic slight, pointing out that work to split the atom was actually pioneered by Kiwi-born physicist Ernest Rutherford.

"I was a bit surprised by new President Donald Trump in his inauguration speech about US greatness claiming today Americans 'split the atom' when that honour belongs to Nelson's most famous and favourite son Sir Ernest Rutherford," Mayor Nick Smith wrote on social media.

Credited with splitting the nucleus of an atom during experiments at the U.K.'s Manchester University in 1917, Rutherford 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 U.S. ambassador to visit the Rutherford memorial in Nelson, population 50,000, "so we can keep the historic record on who split the atom first accurate."

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

"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.

While Rutherford is credited for 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 U.S. Department of Energy.

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

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