J. J. Thomson

Also known as Joseph John Thomson, Sir Joseph Thomson, John Thompson, Sir Joseph John Thomson

British physicist (1856-1940)

OverviewAI-generated

Joseph John Thomson was a physicist, mathematician, and university teacher from the United Kingdom. He was educated at the University of Manchester, Trinity College, Victoria University of Manchester, and the University of Cambridge. Thomson served as a teacher at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral advisor was John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh. He supervised doctoral students including Ernest Rutherford, Theodore Lyman, John Sealy Townsend, and Władysław Natanson. He also taught students such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Charles Glover Barkla, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, and Francis William Aston.

Thomson received the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Copley Medal, and the Royal Medal. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Royal Society, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, and died in Cambridge on August 30, 1940. He is buried in Westminster Abbey and was an Anglican. His notable works include *Beyond the electron*, *The corpuscular theory of matter*, and *Elektrizitat und materie*.

Synthesized by Vinony from 42 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Wikiquote, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1856
Died: 1940
Works: 12

Top works

Anwendungen der Dynamik auf Physik und Chemie
Beyond the electron
The corpuscular theory of matter
Elektrizitat und materie
Recollections and reflections

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Country: United Kingdom
Active from: 1856
Active to: 1940

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 1
Total plays: 2

via Last.fm · J. J. Thomson

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
· 2020 · cited 15,964x
Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts
· 1998 · cited 12,836x
Global Burden of Cardiovascular Diseases and Risk Factors, 1990–2019
· 2020 · cited 10,231x
Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013
· 2014 · cited 9,234x
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Somatic Cells
· 2007 · cited 8,645x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“The difficulties which would have to be overcome to make several of the preceding experiments conclusive are so great as to be almost insurmountable.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The discovery by Monsieur and Madame Curie that a sample of radium gives out sufficient energy to melt half its weight of ice per hour has attracted attention to the question of the source from which the radium derives the energy necessary to maintain the radiation; this problem has been before us ever since the original discovery by Becquerel of the radiation from uranium.”
“The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics1906
“in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases”

NobelPrize.org →

~25 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist. He received the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases." In 1897, he showed that cathode rays were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles (now called electrons), which he calculated must have bodies much smaller than atoms and a very large charge-to-mass ratio. The electron was the first subatomic particle to be discovered.

Thomson is credited with finding the first evidence for isotopes of a stable (non-radioactive) element in 1912, as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays (positive ions). 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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “J. J. Thomson” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.