Born August 30, 1811

Ernest Rutherford

Brightwater New Zealand

overturned Thomson's model in 1911 with his well-known gold foil experiment in which he demonstrated that the atom has a tiny, heavy nucleus. Rutherford designed an experiment to use the alpha particles emitted by a radioactive element as probes to the unseen world of atomic structure.

A pioneer of nuclear physics and the first to split the atom.

Rutherford started to work with J. J. Thomson on the conductive effects of X-rays on gases, work which led to the discovery of the electron which Thomson presented to the world in 1897.

Rutherford