What did Rutherford contribute to the study of science?

After Rutherford's discovery(Planetary Model), scientists started to realize that the atom is not ultimately a single particle, but is made up of far smaller subatomic particles. Following it research was done to figure out the exact atomic structure which led to Rutherford's gold foil experiment. They eventually discovered that atoms have a positively-charged nucleus in the center. Since electrons were found to be even smaller, this meant that the atom consists of mostly empty space.