Born: Cheetham Hill, a suburb of Manchester on December 18th 1856 Accomplishments:
- Described nature of cathode rays
- Plum pudding model of an atom
- Discovered the electron
- Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906
Life:
- Thomson expressed an early interest in atomic structure which was reflected in his Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings
- Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings won him the Adams Prize in 1884
- 1886 - Thomson visited America to give a course of four lectures, which summarized his current researches
- Knighted in 1908
- Upon his return from America, Thomson achieved the most brilliant work of his life - an original study of cathode rays culminating in the discovery of the electron in 1897.
- Discovered a method for separating different kinds of atoms and molecules by the use of positive rays.
Plum Pudding Model:
- Composed of electrons (which Thomson still called "corpuscles") surrounded by a soup of positive charge to balance the negative.
