Rutherford conducted his famous gold foil experiment in 1911, which led him to propose the nuclear model of the atom. This model was a significant departure from the earlier plum pudding model, which suggested that positive and negative charges were evenly distributed throughout the atom.
Rutherford's experiment showed that most of the alpha particles fired at a thin gold foil passed straight through, but some were deflected at large angles, suggesting a very dense, positively charged center called the nucleus. He proposed that the negatively charged electrons orbited this nucleus, like planets orbiting the sun.
