The Role of Models in the Discovery of the Nucleus: Ernest Rutherford and his School

Abstract

Ernest Rutherford is remembered as the scientist who proposed a planetary atomic model that would overcome the atomic structure of the early 20th century, proposed by J.J. Thomson, and based on a volume of positive charge within which the negative charge was considered to be uniformly distributed. Reading Rutherford’s original paper published in 1911—allows us to compare the models of these two physicists and discuss the concept of the model itself.