Imagine firing tiny particles at a sheet of gold and expecting almost all of them to pass straight through. That was, broadly, what Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues expected. What happened instead ...

When Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden direct alpha particles at a thin gold foil, the expectation is that almost all of them ...

Ernest Rutherford (right) and Hans Geiger in the lab in Manchester University where they investigated alpha particles. Photo / Getty Images Ernest Rutherford is so revered for his scientific ...

Ernest Rutherford's family emigrated from England to New Zealand before he was born. They ran a successful farm near Nelson, where Ernest was born. One of 12 children, he liked the hard work and open ...

“All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” That quote, repeated in many articles and books, is attributed to Ernest Rutherford, widely recognized as the father of nuclear physics. However, ...

In 1909, Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden took a piece of radium and used it to fire charged particles at a sheet of gold foil. They wanted to test the then-dominant theory that atoms ...

There are few discoveries in science that can be said to have changed the world but one must surely be the 'splitting of the atom' by Ernest Rutherford in Manchester. Rutherford was a New Zealander, ...

Mayor says he will invite incoming US ambassador to visit the memorial to Sir Ernest Rutherford, the New Zealander who split the atom in a British laboratory New Zealanders are not typically ones for ...