Question

Consider the work of Thomson, Rutherford, and Bohr. In your opinion, which was the most important and why? Be sure to state what your selected person discovered and how it contributed to the model of the atom.

Answer 1

not sure you could ever rank order in that way.

the latest one always "seems" the most important, certainly most clever/sophisticated: compare Galileo to Einstein. however those who are blessed with these gifts are usually the first to acknowledge the work of their priors.

of course, in every single case, it seems likely that someone else would have done the work anyway, so Liebnitz would have covered a lot of Newton's cool maths [in fact, he did] and Poincare would have covered for Einstein on some of his stuff. and so on.

so maybe you can take the view that JJ Thompson is best because he would have given us Brirains's Got Talent and Jeremy Kyle, had Rutherford and Bohr joined a monastery. i don't know if that's true but i would heartily disagree that that was a good outcome.

Tesla, Tycho Brage, Oliver Heaviside, ..., or the guy from the Monkeys whose mum invented Tipex or Post-It stickers or something like that.

i think you'd need a time machine and some universes to play with :p