Ernest Rutherford and his contribution in radioactivity
Ernest Rutherford is termed as the Father of Radioactivity and nuclear science. Rutherford, who born in 1871 and passed on in 1937, discovered alpha and beta rays. He set forth the law of radioactive decay, identified the alpha particles as helium nuclei. Rutherford postulated the nuclear structure of an atom. His contribution to Radioactivity came from an experiment he demonstrated by firing alpha particles into gas atoms where few particles were seen to deflect. This implied a dense, positively changed central region of an atom contained an atomic mass (Dardo, 2004). Figure 1. Top: expected results, alpha particles passing ...
