Joseph
John (J.J.) Thomson was born in Manchester
on December 18, 1856. In 1870 he enrolled
at Owens College Manchester and six years
later entered Trinity College, University
of Cambridge. He became a Fellow of
Trinity College in 1880 and remained a
member of the College for the rest of his
life, assuming the post of Lecturer in
1883 and Master in 1918. He was appointed
to Cavendish Professor of Experimental
Physics in 1884 at The University of
Cambridge at just 28 years of age. His
young age at the time was not without its
critics. "Matters have come to a pretty
pass when they elect mere boys
Professors", one senior member of
University is reported; others doubted his
experience as an experimentalist. Thomson
was reportedly clumsy with his hands and
relied heavily on his assistants. He
carried out most of his theoretical work
at home on scrap paper.
Thomson's text "Application of Dynamics to
Physics and Chemistry" appeared in 1886
and in 1892 his "Notes on Recent
Researches in Electricity and Magnetism"
was published. Thomson with Professor J.
H. Poynting published a four-volume
textbook of physics "Properties of Matter"
and in 1895 he produced "Elements of the
Mathematical Theory of Electricity and
Magnetism". Thomson visited America in
1896 and gave four lectures at Princeton.
These lectures were subsequently published
as "Discharge of Electricity through
Gases" on his return.
In 1897 that Thomson completed a study of
cathode rays culminating in the discovery
of the electron (click here for an audio
presentation). This discovery was
announced to the Royal Institution on
Friday, April 30, 1897. He returned to the
United States in 1904 to deliver six
lectures on electricity and matter at Yale
University. They contained some important
suggestions as to the structure of the
atom. He discovered a method for
separating different kinds of atoms and
molecules through the use of positive
rays, an idea developed by his student
Francis
William Aston, in the discovery of
isotopes. Thomson continued to be a
prolific writer and authored "The
Structure of Light" (1907), "The
Corpuscular Theory of Matter" (1907),
"Rays of Positive Electricity" (1913),
"The Electron in Chemistry" (1923) and his
autobiography, "Recollections and
Reflections" (1936), among other
publications.
Thomson received the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1906
(read his Nobel
Prize Speech here - Requires
Adobe
Acrobat)
and was knighted in 1908. He was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884 and
served as President from 1916-1920. Among
his many awards were the Hodgkins Medal in
1902 from the Smithsonian Institute,
Washington D.C. and the Dalton Medal in
1931 from Manchester. Thomson held
honorary doctorate degrees from the
Universities of Oxford, Dublin, London,
Victoria, Columbia, Cambridge, Durham,
Birmingham, Göttingen, Leeds, Oslo,
Sorbonne, Edinburgh, Reading, Princeton,
Glasgow, Johns Hopkins, Aberdeen, Athens,
Cracow and Philadelphia.
In 1890, he married Rose Elisabeth Paget
and they had one son, Sir George Paget
Thomson (1892-1975), formerly Emeritus
Professor of Physics at London University,
who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1937 for
"his experimental discovery of the
diffraction of electrons by crystals".
J.J. Thomson died August 30, 1940 at the
age of 83.
