He is to the atom what Darwin is to evolution, Newton to mechanics, Faraday to electricity and Einstein to relativity

He is to the atom what Darwin is to evolution, Newton to mechanics, Faraday to electricity and Einstein to relativity. --John Campbell

By: Abby Kaiser & Lauren Poppel Period 6

Born: August 30, 1871

Country of birth: Nelson, New Zealand Died: in Cambridge, England on October 19, 1937

Countries & Institutions with most significant work:

New Zealand Canada England

Names/Relationships of Important Rivals or Colleagues:

J.J. Thomson (Teacher of Cavendish Laboratory ) R.B. Owens (colleague: he discovered a new noble

gas, an isotope of radon with) Frederick Soddy (colleague: created disintegration theory together)

Rutherford displayed that radioactivity decays over time. Also, he was the first person to artificially change one element into another.
This unleashed the power of the atom

Most importantly, he created the gold foil experiment.

 He can be tracked back to the first modern smoke

detector
He blew smoke into an ionization chamber and watcher the changes in ionization

Designed to show how alpha particles reacted with a thin piece of foil. How it worked:
First, Rutherford took a piece of foil with

positively charged alpha particles.

He saw that many of the particles went through the foil meaning that an atom is made up of empty space. However, some particles bounced back resulting in the fact that from this event occurring, the nucleus is positively charged.

The gold foil experiment displayed there is primarily empty space surrounded by a central core called the nucleus.
This laid the beginning structure to an atom

Rutherford was the first person to split the atom In addition, he was the first person to discover there is a nucleus

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/ laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/ radioactivity.php http://www.rutherford.org.nz/biography.htm