Sir Joseph John Thomson

Joseph John Thomson was born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, on December 18, 1856. In 1870 he enrolled at Owens College, and in 1876 transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar. In 1897 the British physicist conducted a series of experiments, studying the nature of electric discharge in a high-vacuum cathode-ray tube, and found the electron. This, at the time, was being examined by various other scientists. Thomson received various awards; in 1906 J.J. Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases". Joseph was knighted in 1908. J.J Thomson died August, 30 1940.