Ernest Rutherford was born in a family of twelve children on August 30th, 1871 in New Zealand. He was poor, but attended New Zealand collegiate school. He is referred to “Father of the Nuclear Age” due to his contribution to the Nuclear. He found two types of radiation which are “alpha” and “beta”. He also concluded that the nucleus is surrounded by electrons with the gold foil experiment. This revealed two things about the atom, which are that; atoms are mostly made up of empty space, and that the center of an atom is hard, dense and has a positive charge. His hard work was rewarded in 1908 when he won the Nobel prize for chemistry.