The so-called Rutherford's experiment, as it is outlined in many physics textbooks, is a case in point of the flaws around the history at the educational level of one of the decisive event of modern physics: the discovery that the atom has a nucleus. This paper shows that this alleged experiment is a very approximate and very partial synthesis of a series of different particle scattering experiments, starting with that carried out by Rutherford in 1906 and ending with Geiger and Marsden's 1913 experiments.

A brief reply to Prof. Campbell's comment follows below. We thank Prof. Campbell for having pointed out an inaccuracy in his comment to our work [1]. In our paper, there is indeed a minor inaccuracy about the real position of Hans Geiger in Manchester [2]. On page 4 of our paper, talking about Hans Geiger, it is written "young Rutherford's PhD student at the University of Manchester". This should be changed to "young Rutherford's assistant at the University of Manchester". As a matter of fact, Hans Geiger had already earned his PhD at the University of Erlangen under Eilhard Wiedemann on July 23, 1906, with a thesis by the title "Strahlungs-, Temperatur-und Potentialmessungen in Entladungsröhren bei Starken Strömen" (Radiation, temperature and potential measurements in discharge tubes with strong currents") (e.g. see "