1919, Discovery of the Proton

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Year: 1919
Chemist: Ernest Rutherford
Contribution: Discovery of the Proton

When Ernest Rutherford returned to experimenting after the first world war, he took to shooting alpha particles into nitrogen gas. This transmuted the elements, and convinced Rutherford that part of the hydrogen nucleus was present in the nitrogen nucleus, meaning it was an elementary particle. Rutherford named it the proton, which we now know is what gives an atom its chemical properties.

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