Question

character sketch of j.j thomson

Answer 1

J. J. Thomson took science to new heights with his 1897 discovery of the electron – the first subatomic particle.

He also found the first evidence that stable elements can exist as isotopes and invented one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry – the mass spectrometer.

Joseph John Thomson was born on December 18, 1856 in Manchester, England, UK.

His father, Joseph James Thomson, ran a specialist bookshop that had been in his family for three generations. His mother, Emma Swindells, came from a family that owned a cotton company.

Even as a young boy Joey, who would later be known as J. J., was deeply interested in science. At the age of 14 he became a student at Owens College, the University of Manchester, where he studied mathematics, physics and engineering.

A shy boy, his parents hoped he would become an apprentice engineer with a locomotive company. These hopes were dashed, however, with the death of his father when J. J. was 16. The fees for engineering apprenticeships were high, and his mother could not afford them.

This misfortune ultimately benefited science, because J. J. needed to find funding to continue his education. In 1876 he won a scholarship which took him, aged 19, to the University of Cambridge to study mathematics. Four years later he graduated with high honors in his bachelors degree.

Thomson continued studying at Cambridge, and in 1882 he won the Adam’s Prize, one of the universities most sought after prizes in mathematics. In 1883 he was awarded a master’s degree in mathematics.

Early Research Work

Atoms
When Thomson began his research career, nobody had a clear picture of how atoms might look. Thomson decided he would picture them as a kind of smoke ring and see where the mathematics would take him. This work, for which he was awarded both the Adam’s Prize and his master’s degree had the title A Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings. Although the title and beginning chapters might suggest applied mathematics is the major theme, the headings of the final sections are revealing:

Pressure of a gas. Boyle’s LawThermal effusionSketch of a chemical theoryTheory of quantivalenceValency of the various [chemical] elements

Thomson was pushing his powerful mathematical mind towards a deeper understanding of matter.

Electricity and Magnetism
In addition to atoms, Thomson began to take a serious interest in James Clerk Maxwell’s equations, which had revealed electricity and magnetism to be manifestations of a single force – the electromagnetic force – and had revealed light to be an electromagnetic wave.

In 1893, at the age of 36, Thomson published Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, building on Maxwell’s work. His book is sometimes described as “Maxwell’s Equations Volume 3.”