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Thomson
Selena Bradshaw
Peyton Armbrust
Chemistry, 4th hour
October 13th, 2013
Joseph John Thomson JJ Thomson a chemist, was born in Cheetham Hill, a suburb in Manchester England. Thomson was born on December 18th, 1856. When he grew a bit older, he went to Owens college in Manchester, in the year of 1870. In 1876 though he went to Trinity college as a minor scholar. In 1880 he became a fellow of the Trinity College when he was second wrangler and second smith prizeman, he remained a member of Trinity College for the rest of his life, becoming a lecturer in 1883 and master in the year of 1918. After this, he then was a Cavendish professor for experimental physics at Cambridge where he succeeded Lord Rayleigh. From 1884 to 1918 he was an Honorary Professor of Physics at Cambridge of Royal Institution, of London. In 1884, Thomson won the Adams prize because of the Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings. His Application of Dynamics to Physics and Chemistry appeared in 1886, and in 1892 he had his Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism published. Also, in 1895, he produced Elements of the Mathematical theory of electricity, and also Magnetism was published in the 5th edition in 1921. Thomson visited America in 1896 to give a course of four lectures which summed up his current researches at Princeton. In 1897 the lectures were published as Discharge of Electricity through gases. On his way home though from America he discovered his most successful work of his life - and original study of cathode rays culminating in the discovery of the electron, this was announced on friday April 30th of 1897. In 1903 he published his book called “Conduction of Electricity Through Gases”. In 1904 Thomson returned to America to deliver six lectures on electricity and matter at Yale University. The lectures contained very important information about the structure of the atom. Thomson discovered a method for separating different kinds of atoms and molecules by the use of positive rays, an idea developed by Aston, Dempster and others towards the discovery of many isotopes. Not only did he do this, but he also wrote several books; “ The Structure of Light (1907), The Corpuscular Theory of Matter (1907), Rays of Positive Electricity (1913), The Electron in Chemistry (1923) and his autobiography, Recollections and Reflections (1936)”, among many other publications. Although for most of Thomson’s career he worked with the conduction of electricity through gases he was the one that discovered the protons and electrons. JJ Thomson was at the Cavendish laboratory when he discovered the protons and electrons. Thomson was experimenting with currents of electricity inside empty glass tube, he was investigating a long standing puzzle, or in other words “cathode rays”. He first called these little particles that were smaller than atoms “corpuscles”. This was what Thomson thought made up the atoms. Thomson’s experiment was not supported very well, so himself and others had to sort out the confusion. By doing this, he proposed the “plum