Sir Joseph John Thomson :: biographies bio

"Could anything at first sight seem more impractical than a body which is so small that its mass is an insignificant fraction of the mass of an atom of hydrogen?" -- J.J. Thomson. * Sir Joseph John Thomson was born December 18, 1856 in Cheetham Hill near Manchester, England. * His dad was a bookkeeper in Manchester who died with Thomson was 16 years old. * He entered Owens College, now known as the Victoria University of Manchester, at age 14. * There he took courses in experimental physics and math. * In 1876, he obtained a scholarship for Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and remained there for the rest of his life. * In 1890, he married Rose Elisabeth. * He and Rose had a son, Sir George Paget Thomson, Emeritus Professor of Physics at London University, and a daughter. * Thomson taught mathematics and physics at Cambridge, succeeding Lord Rayleigh as professor of physics at the age of 27. * He became director of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory to do research from 1884 through 1919. * For his involvement in the scientific community, he was appointed president of the Royal Society, a position he maintained from 1915 through 1920. * He was invited to be professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institute of Great Britain from 1905 to 1918. * He served as master of Trinity College from 1918 until his death. * He was also very active in many other fields of interest other than science. He was involved in politics, current fiction, drama, university sports, and the non-technical aspects of science. * His greatest interest outside of physics was plants. He enjoyed walks in the hilly regions near Cambridge, where he searched for rare botanical specimens for his garden. * He died August 30, 1940 at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England. He was given the honor of burial in the Westminster Abbey. * J.J. Thomson attempted to solve the argument on the nature of cathode rays in 1897. For these investigations he won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1906.