In 1913 Thomson published an influential monograph urging chemists to use the mass spectrograph in their analyses. His nonmathematical atomic theory-unlike early quantum theory-could also be used to account for chemical bonding and molecular structure (see Gilbert Newton Lewis and Irving Langmuir). Of all the physicists associated with determining the structure of the atom, Thomson remained most closely aligned to the chemical community. He was a good lecturer, encouraged his students, and devoted considerable attention to the wider problems of science teaching at university and secondary levels. Even though he was clumsy with his hands, he had a genius for designing apparatus and diagnosing its problems. ![]() In 1884 he was named to the prestigious Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, although he had personally done very little experimental work. He was then recommended to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a mathematical physicist. ![]() Instead young Thomson attended Owens College, Manchester, which had an excellent science faculty. His father intended him to be an engineer, which in those days required an apprenticeship, but his family could not raise the necessary fee. Ironically, Thomson-great scientist and physics mentor-became a physicist by default. In 1897 he showed that cathode rays (radiation emitted when. ![]() Thomson published this work in 1897, for which he received much acclaim - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1906 for this work, and was knighted in 1908. From "The Growth of Physical Science," by Sir James Hopwood Jeans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948) Early Life and Education Thomson managed to estimate its magnitude by performing experiments with charged particles in gases. In a series of experiments using cathode ray tubes, Thomson concluded that cathode rays were particles with a negative charge and much smaller in size than an atom.
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