A Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings

The British scientist Sir Joseph Thomson is best known in the world of physics for discovering the electron. Thomson studied and taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge University, from 1876 until his death in 1940. He became director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the early age of 27. Of those who eventually worked under him at the laboratory, seven won the Nobel Prize. Thomson won a fellowship to Trinity College with a dissertation showing how a number of physical and chemical effects could be predicted from the laws of mechanics without detailed knowledge. After intensive study of vortex rings and cathode rays, he pioneered the field of subatomic particle physics with his work on the electron. Thomson's experiments showed that cathode rays were made up of particles with a measurable mass. This research resulted in a Nobel Prize for Thomson in 1906. Thomson was an excellent mathematician. However, he made his discoveries primarily by an insight into the physical nature of the world, which the mathematics made more precise. Thomson also had an outstanding ability to devise ingenious experiments that went straight to the point. He is important in science not only for his own work but also as the leader of a group of research workers, including many great physicists of the following generation. Thomson's son G. P. Thomson won the 1937 Nobel Prize in physics.