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Sir Joseph John Thomson(who was always called J.J) was an English physicist who was known for the discovery and identification of the Electron and the discovery of the first subatomic particle.
He was born in December 18th, 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester Lancashire, England. Thomson's early education was in a small private school where he demonstrated outstanding talent and interest in science. He was also an alumni of Owens College, Manchester(now University of Manchester) which he attended at a young age of 14! In 1876, he received a scholarship to attend trinity college at Cambridge to study Mathematics.
J.J. worked in the cavendish laboratory after graduation, under the tutelage of Lord Rayleigh. He quickly earned a membership in the prestigious Royal society and was appointed Rayleigh successor at the cavendish professor of physics at the age of 28.
In 1897, Thomson showed that cathode rays were were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles(electrons) which he calculated must have bodies way smaller than atoms and a very large value for their charge-to-mass ratio.
J.J. Thomson also found the first evidence for isotopes of a stable(non radioactive)element in 1913 as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays (positively charged ions).
Thomson devised better equipment and methods than had been used before. When he passed the rays through the vacuum, he was able to measure the angle at which they were deflected and calculate the ratio of the electrical charge to the mass of the particles. He discovered that the ratio was the same regardless of what type of gas was used, which led him to conclude that the particles that made up the gases were universal.
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***J.J. Thomson's cathode ray tube above**
Thomson determined that all matter is made up of tiny particles that are much smaller than atoms. He originally called these particles 'corpuscles,' although they are now called electrons. This discovery upended the prevailing theory that the atom was the smallest fundamental unit.
He was awarded a Nobel prize in 1906 "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gasses". He was knighted (Sir) in 1908 by King Edward VII and appointed to the order of merit in 1912. In 1914, he gave a lecture in Oxford on "the atomic theory"
Thomson published a number of paper addressing both mathematical and experimental issues of electromagnetism. He examined the electromagnetic theory of light of James Clerk Maxwell, introduced the concept electromagnetic mass of a charged particle and demonstrated that a moving charged body would apparently increase in mass.
One of Thomson's greatest contributions to modern science was his role as a highly gifted teacher. Ernest Rutherford was one of his students who succeeded him as Cavendish Professor of physics. In addition to J.J. Thomson himself, six of his research assistants (Charles Glover Barkla, Niels Bohr, Max Born, William Henry Bragg, Owen Willans Richardson and Charles Thomson Rees Wilson) won Nobel Prizes in physics, and two (Francis William Aston and ErnestRutherford) won Nobel prizes in chemistry. Thomson's son (George Paget Thomson) won the 1937 Nobel Prize in physics for proving the wave-like properties of electrons.
Sir J.J. Thomson was both respected and well-liked, and students came from around the world to study with him. He died on 30 August, 1940 in Cambridge, United Kingdom. His remains lay in Westminster Abbey beside three other influential scientists; Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and his student Ernest Rutherford.
Some of his Quotes were:
"To the electron: May it never be of any use"
"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."
"As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter."
