Ernest Rutherford was born in New Zealand in 1871 to a large family with little means of support. Through experiments where he shot particles at gold foil, Rutherford discovered the nucleus at the center of the atom, overturning the prior theory of J.J. Thomson. His discovery of the dense nucleus through noticing that some particles passed through the foil while others bounced off led to him receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.