Picture of Ernest Rutherford
The Bettmann Archive. From painting by James Gunn (1932).
Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand-born physicist who lived between 1871-1937. He is called the father of nuclear physics because of his studies on the structure of an atom. Rutherford believed that an atom is like a small planetary system, with the protons and neutrons in the center (like the sun), circled by electrons (like planets).
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Our online store
includes issues of NESTA's quarterly journal, The Earth Scientist
, full of classroom activities on different topics in Earth and space science, ranging from seismology
, rocks and minerals
, and Earth system science