{"id":212978,"date":"2025-05-01T09:10:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T14:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/j-j-thomson"},"modified":"2025-05-01T09:10:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T14:10:58","slug":"j-j-thomson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/j-j-thomson","title":{"rendered":"J. J. Thomson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WH-U_qCEzT0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Sir Joseph John Thomson<\/b> (18 December 1856 \u2013 30 August 1940) was an English <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Physicist\" title=\"Physicist\">physicist<\/a> who received the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nobel_Prize_in_Physics\" title=\"Nobel Prize in Physics\">Nobel Prize in Physics<\/a> in 1906 \u201cin recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electricity\" title=\"Electricity\">electricity<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gas\" title=\"Gas\">gases<\/a>.\u201d<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-1\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-1\"> [ 1 ]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>In 1897, Thomson showed that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cathode_ray\" title=\"Cathode ray\">cathode rays<\/a> were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles (now called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electron\" title=\"Electron\">electrons<\/a>), which he calculated must have bodies much smaller than <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atom\" title=\"Atom\">atoms<\/a> and a very large <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charge-to-mass_ratio\" class=\"\" title=\"Charge-to-mass ratio\">charge-to-mass ratio<\/a>.<sup id= cite_ref-Profile_2-0 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-Profile-2\"> [ 2 ]<\/a> <\/sup> Thomson is also credited with finding the first evidence for <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isotope\" title=\"Isotope\">isotopes<\/a> of a stable (non-radioactive) element in 1913, as part of his exploration into the composition of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Canal_ray\" class=\"\" title=\"Canal ray\">canal rays<\/a> (positive ions). His experiments to determine the nature of positively charged particles, with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Francis_William_Aston\" title=\"Francis William Aston\">Francis William Aston<\/a>, were the first use of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mass_spectrometry\" title=\"Mass spectrometry\">mass spectrometry<\/a> and led to the development of the mass spectrograph.<sup id= cite_ref-Profile_2-1 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-Profile-2\"> [ 2 ]<\/a> <\/sup><sup id= cite_ref-Jones_3-0 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-Jones-3\"> [ 3 ]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.<sup id= cite_ref-Nobel1906_4-0 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-Nobel1906-4\"> [ 4 ]<\/a> <\/sup> Thomson was also a teacher, and seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ernest_Rutherford\" title=\"Ernest Rutherford\">Ernest Rutherford<\/a> (Chemistry 1908), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lawrence_Bragg\" title=\"Lawrence Bragg\">Lawrence Bragg<\/a> (Physics 1915), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Barkla\" class=\"\" title=\"Charles Barkla\">Charles Barkla<\/a> (Physics 1917), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Francis_Aston\" class=\"\" title=\"Francis Aston\">Francis Aston<\/a> (Chemistry 1922), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Thomson_Rees_Wilson\" class=\"\" title=\"Charles Thomson Rees Wilson\">Charles Thomson Rees Wilson<\/a> (Physics 1927), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Owen_Richardson\" title=\"Owen Richardson\">Owen Richardson<\/a> (Physics 1928) and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Victor_Appleton\" class=\"\" title=\"Edward Victor Appleton\">Edward Victor Appleton<\/a> (Physics 1947).<sup id= cite_ref-5 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._J._Thomson#cite_note-5\"> [ 5 ]<\/a> <\/sup> Only <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arnold_Sommerfeld\" title=\"Arnold Sommerfeld\">Arnold Sommerfeld<\/a>\u2019s record of mentorship offers a comparable list of high-achieving students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 \u2013 30 August 1940) was an English physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 \u201cin recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases.\u201d [ 1 ] In 1897, Thomson showed that cathode rays were composed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}