😉 Greetings to regular and new readers! In the article “Joseph John Thomson: A Brief Biography, Facts” – about the life of an English physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1906 for his studies of the passage of electricity through gases. Lived: 1856-1940.
Biography of Joseph John Thomson
Joseph John Thomson was born near Manchester to a second-hand bookseller’s family. Zodiac sign – Sagittarius. When he was not yet 15 years old, he entered the University of Manchester, or Owens College, as it was then called. On the advice of a professor of mathematics, he continued his education at Cambridge. In 1876 he entered Trinity College.
Four years later, he passed the final exams, and received a second award, losing the first to Larmor, the later famous physicist. Joseph soon becomes a member of Trinity College and starts working at the Cavendish Laboratory under Rayleigh.
Scientific work
In 1882 he received the Adams Prize for his work on the vortex in an incompressible fluid. During this period, his works are, in fact, mathematical. However, after 1880, the scientist became more and more interested in the problems of physics, or rather the problems of electromagnetism.
At 28, he was elected the third (after Maxwell and Rayleigh) Cavendish professor. His election to such a high post was extremely unexpected for everyone, including himself. The future has shown that the Cambridge professors were not mistaken in their choice.
In 1893 the professor publishes Research on Electricity and Magnetism. This is, according to his plans, a continuation of Maxwell’s “Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.”
The most interesting part, the passage of electric current through gases, was the first work on this topic to appear in England. Soon the young scientist became a renowned authority in this area of physics.
The discovery by Roentgen in 1896 of mysterious rays, later called X-rays, intensified studies of the electrical conductivity of gases. This ultimately led Thomson to the discovery of the electron. Under his leadership, the Cavendish Laboratory turned into a friendly team of scientists united by common scientific interests.
Thanks to joint work, the work “The Passage of Electricity through Gases” appeared, it was published in 1903. For his contribution to science in 1906, the scientist receives the Nobel Prize.
He soon began to study positively charged particles. In 1913 the book “Beams of positive current” was published, it became the beginning of mass spectroscopy.
The discovery of electrons (Thompson himself called them corpuscles) allowed him to create the first electromagnetic model of the atom. Subsequently, it was improved by Rutherford and Bohr. The brilliant physicist received all kinds of awards in his homeland and the post of President of the Royal Society of London.
At the same time, he became chairman of Trinity College, after which he was elevated to the knighthood. But the main reward for him was the love and gratitude of his students (among them Rutherford, Langevin and Bohr), whose successes he was most proud of.
Died Joseph John Thomson at the age of 83. Buried in London at Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton.
Family
The famous physicist married Rose Page. Children were born in this marriage:
- Miss Joan;
- George Paget Thomson (1892-1975), later professor of physics and Nobel laureate.
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