1. Dalton proposed the first atomic theory in 1808, which stated that all matter is made of atoms that cannot be created, destroyed, or subdivided during chemical reactions. 2. In the early 1900s, scientists like Thomson, Rutherford, and Faraday expanded on Dalton's theory by discovering that atoms contain electrons and identifying the nucleus as the center of the atom that contains protons and neutrons. 3. Rutherford further amended atomic theory in 1911 by concluding that the nucleus contains nearly all the mass of an atom and that electrons orbit the nucleus, leaving mostly empty space inside atoms.