J. J. Thomson

Dec 18, 1856 - Aug 30, 1940

Sir Joseph John Thomson OM PRS was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered.
In 1897, Thomson showed that cathode rays were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles, which he calculated must have bodies much smaller than atoms and a very large charge-to-mass ratio. Thomson is also credited with finding the first evidence for isotopes of a stable element in 1913, as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays. His experiments to determine the nature of positively charged particles, with Francis William Aston, were the first use of mass spectrometry and led to the development of the mass spectrograph.
Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.
Show lessRead more
Wikipedia

Discover this historical figure

12 items

“If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays.”

J. J. Thomson
Dec 18, 1856 - Aug 30, 1940
Home
Discover
Play
Nearby
Favorites