A short answer for the Rutherford atomic model: the atom is composed from a central part - a nucleus, positively charged, surrounded by electrons - very small negative charged particles.
The experimental evidence led Rutherford to conclude that an atom is mostly empty space because most of the particles weren't deflected off of the gold foil in his experiment.
Rutherford concluded that atoms must be mostly empty space with a small, dense nucleus at the center. This discovery led to the development of the Rutherford model of the atom.
The gold foil experiment led Rutherford to conclude that atoms have a small, dense, positively charged nucleus at their center, surrounded by mostly empty space where electrons orbit. This discovery revolutionized the understanding of atomic structure and led to the development of the nuclear model of the atom.
Rutherford's famous gold foil experiment disproved Thompson's "plum pudding" model of the atom, and instead suggested a small, central, positively charged region (the nucleus) surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.
In Rutherford's gold-foil experiment, when alpha particles were shot at gold foil, most passed straight through, but some were deflected at large angles. This led Rutherford to conclude that the atom is mostly empty space, with a small, dense, positively charged nucleus at the center that caused the deflections. The majority of the atom's volume is made up of this empty space, with the nucleus containing most of the atom's mass.
The experiments were being done by Ernest Marsden, and Hans Geiger, under the supervision of Ernest Rutherford.
The gold foil experiment convinced Ernest Rutherford that the atom has a small positively charged nucleus. In this experiment, alpha particles were shot at a thin gold foil. The fact that some of the alpha particles were deflected and even bounced back led Rutherford to conclude that atoms have a small, dense, positively charged nucleus.
Ernest Rutherford concluded that the positive charge of an atom is concentrated in a dense core at the center called the nucleus. This discovery came from his gold foil experiment, where he observed that most of the alpha particles passed straight through the foil, indicating that most of the atom is empty space.
Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford was the man you are thinking of. He was the first person to 'split the atom'.
Nucleus
The gold-foil experiment