Editing Rutherford scattering experiments (section)

==== Atomic model ====
{{main|Rutherford model|Rutherford–Bohr model}}
Rutherford's new atom model caused no stir.<ref name=Baily2013/>{{rp|28}} Rutherford explicitly ignores the electrons, only mentioning [[Hantaro Nagaoka]]'s [[Saturnian model]] of electrons orbiting a tiny "sun", a model that had been previously rejected as mechanically unstable. By ignoring the electrons Rutherford also ignores any potential implications for atomic spectroscopy for chemistry.<ref name="PaisInwardBound"/>{{rp|302}} Rutherford himself did not press the case for his atomic model: his own 1913 book on "Radioactive substances and their radiations" only mentions the atom twice; other books by other authors around this time focus on Thomson's model.<ref>Andrade, Edward Neville Da Costa. "The Rutherford Memorial Lecture, 1957." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences 244.1239 (1958): 437-455.</ref>{{rp|446}}  
	
The impact of Rutherford's nuclear model came after [[Niels Bohr]] arrived as a post-doctoral student in Manchester at Rutherford's invitation. Bohr dropped his work on the Thomson model in favour of Rutherford's nuclear model, developing the [[Rutherford–Bohr model]] over the next several years.  Eventually Bohr incorporated early ideas of [[quantum mechanics]] into the model of the atom, allowing prediction of electronic spectra and concepts of chemistry.<ref name=Heilbron1968/>{{rp|304}}

[[Hantaro Nagaoka]], who had proposed a Saturnian model of the atom, wrote to Rutherford from Tokyo in 1911: "I have been struck with the simpleness of the apparatus you employ and the brilliant results you obtain."<ref>Letter from Hantaro Nagaoka to Ernest Rutherford, 22 February 1911. Quoted in Eve (1939), p. 200</ref> The astronomer [[Arthur Eddington]] called Rutherford's discovery the most important scientific achievement since [[Democritus]] proposed the atom ages earlier.<ref name=Reeves2008/> Rutherford has since been hailed as "the father of nuclear physics".<ref name=Father>{{cite web |title=Ernest Rutherford |url=https://ehs.msu.edu/lab-clinic/rad/hist-figures/rutherford.html |website=Environmental Health and Safety Office of Research Regulatory Support |publisher=Michigan State University |access-date=23 June 2023 |archive-date=22 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230622163634/https://ehs.msu.edu/lab-clinic/rad/hist-figures/rutherford.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ernest Rutherford: father of nuclear science |url=https://media.newzealand.com/en/story-ideas/ernest-rutherford-father-of-nuclear-science/ |website=New Zealand Media Resources |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612184534/https://media.newzealand.com/en/story-ideas/ernest-rutherford-father-of-nuclear-science/ |archive-date=12 June 2021 |language=en |url-status=dead}}</ref>

In a lecture delivered on 15 October 1936 at Cambridge University,<ref>''Report on the Activities of the History of Science Lectures Committee 1936–1947'', Whipple Museum Papers, Whipple Museum for the History of Science, Cambridge, C62 i.<br />The report lists two lectures, on October 8 and 15. The lecture on atomic structure was likely the one delivered on the 15th.</ref><ref>''Cambridge University Reporter'', 7 October 1936, p. 141<br/>The lecture took place in the lecture room of the Physiological Laboratory at 5 pm.</ref> Rutherford described his shock at the results of the [[#1909 experiment|1909 experiment]]:

{{blockquote|Then I remember two or three days later Geiger coming to me in great excitement and saying, "We have been able to get some of the α-particles coming backwards...". It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realised that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which  the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive centre, carrying a charge.<ref>''The Development of the Theory of Atomic Structure'' (Rutherford 1936). Reprinted in [https://archive.org/details/backgroundtomode032734mbp/page/n85/mode/2up ''Background to Modern Science: Ten Lectures at Cambridge arranged by the History of Science Committee 1936'']</ref>}}

Rutherford's claim of surprise makes for a good story but by the time of the Geiger-Marsden experiment, the result confirmed suspicions Rutherford developed from previous experiments.<ref name=Heilbron1968/>{{rp|265}}
{{Clear}}