Sir Joseph John JJ Thomson was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered.
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46 Facts About JJ Thomson
2.
In 1897, JJ 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.
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3.
JJ Thomson is 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 .
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4.
JJ Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.
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5.
JJ Thomson was a teacher, and several of his mentees went on to win Nobel Prizes.
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6.
Joseph John JJ Thomson was born on 18 December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Lancashire, England.
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7.
JJ Thomson had a brother, Frederick Vernon Thomson, who was two years younger than he was.
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8.
JJ Thomson began experimenting with contact electrification and soon published his first scientific paper.
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10.
On 22 December 1884, JJ Thomson was appointed Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge.
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11.
JJ Thomson was known for his work as a mathematician, where he was recognized as an exceptional talent.
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12.
Joseph John JJ Thomson died on 30 August 1940; his ashes rest in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and his former student, Ernest Rutherford.
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13.
One of JJ Thomson's students was Ernest Rutherford, who later succeeded him as Cavendish Professor of Physics.
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14.
JJ Thomson's son won the 1937 Nobel Prize in physics for proving the wave-like properties of electrons.
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15.
JJ Thomson's prize-winning master's work, Treatise on the motion of vortex rings, shows his early interest in atomic structure.
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16.
JJ Thomson published a number of papers addressing both mathematical and experimental issues of electromagnetism.
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17.
JJ Thomson examined the electromagnetic theory of light of James Clerk Maxwell, introduced the concept of electromagnetic mass of a charged particle, and demonstrated that a moving charged body would apparently increase in mass.
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18.
In further work, published in book form as Applications of dynamics to physics and chemistry, JJ Thomson addressed the transformation of energy in mathematical and theoretical terms, suggesting that all energy might be kinetic.
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19.
JJ Thomson's third book, Elements of the mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism was a readable introduction to a wide variety of subjects, and achieved considerable popularity as a textbook.
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20.
JJ Thomson presented a series of six lectures at Yale University in 1904.
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21.
JJ Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode rays.
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22.
JJ Thomson made his suggestion on 30 April 1897 following his discovery that cathode rays could travel much further through air than expected for an atom-sized particle.
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23.
JJ Thomson estimated the mass of cathode rays by measuring the heat generated when the rays hit a thermal junction and comparing this with the magnetic deflection of the rays.
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24.
JJ Thomson concluded that the rays were composed of very light, negatively charged particles which were a universal building block of atoms.
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25.
JJ Thomson called the particles "corpuscles", but later scientists preferred the name electron which had been suggested by George Johnstone Stoney in 1891, prior to Thomson's actual discovery.
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26.
JJ Thomson believed that the corpuscles emerged from the atoms of the trace gas inside his cathode ray tubes.
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27.
JJ Thomson thus concluded that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were their building blocks.
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28.
In 1904, JJ Thomson suggested a model of the atom, hypothesizing that it was a sphere of positive matter within which electrostatic forces determined the positioning of the corpuscles.
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29.
JJ Thomson made the discovery around the same time that Walter Kaufmann and Emil Wiechert discovered the correct mass to charge ratio of these cathode rays .
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30.
JJ Thomson detected their path by the fluorescence on a squared screen in the jar.
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31.
JJ Thomson found that whatever the material of the anode and the gas in the jar, the deflection of the rays was the same, suggesting that the rays were of the same form whatever their origin.
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32.
JJ Thomson set out to investigate whether or not he could actually separate the charge from the rays.
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33.
JJ Thomson constructed a Crookes tube with an electrometer set to one side, out of the direct path of the cathode rays.
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34.
JJ Thomson observed that the electrometer registered a charge only when he deflected the cathode ray to it with a magnet.
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35.
JJ Thomson concluded that the negative charge and the rays were one and the same.
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36.
In May–June 1897, JJ Thomson investigated whether or not the rays could be deflected by an electric field.
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37.
Previous experimenters had failed to observe this, but JJ Thomson believed their experiments were flawed because their tubes contained too much gas.
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38.
JJ Thomson pasted a scale to the surface of this sphere to measure the deflection of the beam.
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39.
JJ Thomson used the same apparatus as in his previous experiment, but placed the discharge tube between the poles of a large electromagnet.
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40.
JJ Thomson himself remained critical of what his work established, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech referring to "corpuscles" rather than "electrons".
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41.
JJ Thomson imagined the atom as being made up of these corpuscles orbiting in a sea of positive charge; this was his plum pudding model.
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42.
In 1906, JJ Thomson demonstrated that hydrogen had only a single electron per atom.
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43.
JJ Thomson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and appointed to the Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in 1884.
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44.
JJ Thomson won numerous awards and honours during his career including:.
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45.
JJ Thomson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1884 and served as President of the Royal Society from 1915 to 1920.
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46.
JJ Thomson opened the JJ Thomson building, named in his honour, in the Leys School, Cambridge.
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