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Atomic Modeling in the Early 20th Century: 1904 - 1913

The scope of this paper is to discuss the major works that appeared in the period of 1904 to 1913: atomic models proposed by Thomson and Hantaro Nagaoka (1904), Rutherford (1911), and Bohr (1913), and the experimental work that motivated them. It will be seen that, although all of the models discussed here were later shown to be incorrect or incomplete, each one represented an essential step towards an understanding of the nature of matter, a view of the physical world often taken for granted a century down the road.