Also called the Rutherford gold foil experiment, this New Zealand born British physicist directed the Geiger-Marsden experiment and later was known as the father of nuclear physics. Who was he?
Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. "Encyclopædia Britannica" considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867).
Victor Weisskopf Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr. During World War II he was Group Leader of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.