Sir Joseph John “J.J.” Thomson,
OM, FRS (
18 December 1856 –
30 August 1940) was a
British scientist and
Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate, credited for the discovery of the
electron and of
isotopes, the proposition of the
plum pudding model of the atom, and the invention of the
mass spectrometer.
Thomson was born in 1856 in
Cheetham Hill, Manchester in England, of
Scottish parentage. In 1870 he studied engineering at
University of Manchester known as
Owens College at that time, and moved on to
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876. In 1880, he obtained his BA in mathematics (
Second Wrangler and 2nd
Smith's prize) and MA (with
Adams Prize) in 1883. In 1884 he became
Cavendish Professor of Physics. One of his students was
Ernest Rutherford, who would later succeed him in the post. In 1890 he married Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of Sir George Edward Paget, KCB, a physician and then
Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He fathered one son,
George Paget Thomson, and one daughter, Joan Paget Thomson, with her. His son became a noted physicist in his own right, winning the Nobel Prize himself for proving the wavelike properties of electrons.
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 gases." He was
knighted in 1908 and appointed to the
Order of Merit in 1912. In 1914 he gave the
Romanes Lecture in
Oxford on "The atomic theory". In 1918 he became Master of
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained until his death. He died on August 30, 1940 and was buried in
Westminster Abbey, close to
Sir Isaac Newton.
Thomson was elected to Fellow of the
Royal Society on
June 12, 1884 and was subsequently the president of the
Royal Society from 1916 to 1920.
