Week 4 - Back to the Past

Ernest Rutherford

The well known physicist and chemist Ernest Rutherford was the one who discovered and named Alpha, Beta and Gamma which means he was the Father of Nuclear Physics.

He's TRAITS of  simplicity, directness, economy, energy, enthusiasm, and reverence for education brought him to the creative level in conducting experiment.

He successfully discovered the radiation terms when he was exploring and doing research on atoms and X-rays with other professor, J.J Thomson. His Gold foil experiment was then conducted with the helped of the research on the atoms with J.J Thomson which gave him a good start.

According to the sources from the website 

http://www.biography.com/people/ernest-rutherford-39099?page=2

''Rutherford discovered that placing it near foil resulted in one type of radiation being easily soaked up or blocked, while a different type had no trouble penetrating the same foil. He labeled the two radiation types “alpha” and “beta.” As it turns out, the alpha particle was identical to the nucleus of a helium atom. The beta particle was, in fact, the same as an electron or positron.''