The proton |
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The proton was not so much discovered as stumbled upon. Following the discovery of the electron it became clear that atoms were composed of a collection of positive and negative charges. How these charges might be arranged was a mystery, solved in part by Geiger and Marsden, who, with Rutherford, showed that the gold nucleus was not only very dense and very small but the electric field of the nucleus was the inverse square field of a point charge. |
| It followed at once that the nucleus of the hydrogen atom was a small dense positive particle that acted like a point charge. The proton was added to the short existing list of subatomic particles (two!). |