The discovery of the nucleus is attributed to Ernest Rutherford in 1911. Through his famous gold foil experiment, Rutherford found that atoms have a small, dense, positively charged center, which he named the nucleus. This discovery overturned the earlier plum pudding model of the atom and laid the foundation for modern atomic theory. It is worth noting that the term "nucleus" was first used in biology by Robert Brown in 1831 to describe the central part of a cell, but in the context of atomic structure, Ernest Rutherford's work in 1911 marks the discovery of the atomic nucleus as we understand it in physics and chemistry.
