Joseph John Tompson - Nobel Prize Laureate

Paula Stöckelle, 6th May 2021

 

He was a very important English physicist and accomplished major inputs on

the developments of electricity and atomic physics. Tomson very deeply dealt

with electricity through gas and in 1906 he received the Nobel prize for

Physics. He proved the existence of free electrons, determined their specific

charge, and developed the first atomic model.

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Joseph John Tomson lived in the time where the switch between the classic and the modern physics took place. He was born on the 18th December 1856 in Cheetham Hill and with the age of solely 14 years he began to study engineering science in Manchester. However, when his father died two years later, he changed his plans and switched to mathematics and physics. He also studied natural science and in 1884 Joseph became an experimental physics professor at Cambridge University.

 

Even though teaching was very time consuming he managed to also research on his own for which he received many awards, actually nearly all the prizes a physicist could get. In 1906 Tomson maintained the Nobel Prize for Physics, as I already mentioned, in 1908 he was ennobled by the British King, in 1915 the Royal Society elected him as their president and in 1918 Joseph undertook the control of the Trinity College. With the age of 83 he died in the year 1940, highly honored and very popular.

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But what did he really achieve in his life? Let’s say, without him the electricity we know today wouldn’t exist. During his 20s and 30s J. J. Tomson concerned himself with the application of Maxwell’s Theory. With this he was able to prove that a charged sphere gains mass corresponding to their electric charge. This was a first step into the direction of Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence.

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He found prove that cathode rays are charged negative and determined the specific charge of these particles. With the electron the first elementary particle was discovered, which his son G. P. Tomson continued to study. Also in the atomic physics J. J. Tomson contributed very much because he proved that the electrons around an atom are arranged in rings around the nucleus. Furthermore, he demonstrated that not all atoms are identical so Isotopes exist.

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In conclusion Tomson was a very important physicist who achieved very much during his life. However, if he hadn’t found out about all of those things, we wouldn’t have to study them in school… :)