Protons are heavy, positively charged particles that live in the nucleus of atoms. From the point of view of chemistry their main purpose is to keep electrons in orbit around them, so the electrons can carry out chemical reactions.
Every element is essentially defined as a certain number of protons per atom. For example, any atom with 29 protons in it, regardless of how many electrons are around it at the moment and regardless of how many neutrons it has, is an atom of copper. That's simply the definition of copper. If you change the number of electrons you get different ionization states of copper. If you change the number of neutrons you get different isotopes of copper (some of which will be radioactive). But if you change the number of protons, you don't have copper anymore, you have some other element: Add one and you get zinc, subtract one and you get nickel.
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