What did the scientist ernest rutherford do in the early 1900s? what did the scientist ernest rutherford do in the early 1900s? measured the charge of an electron by experiment. discovered cathode rays. proposed a plum-pudding model, named after a dessert, for atom structure. postulated the nuclear model of the atom?

The British scientist Ernest Rutherford postulated the nuclear model of the atom in the early 1900s. He described his model as the atom being mostly empty space with electrons having a fixed orbit around the positively charged nucleus of the atom. The experiment he conducted to arrive at the model is known as the thin-foil experiment. He passed a narrow beam of particles through a thin film of metal foil and observed that the particles were only slightly scattered. It was with this observation that he concluded that most of the mass of a particle is concentrated only in a minute fraction of the total volume of the atom.