Joseph John Thomson

(1856 - 1940)
Cambridge University
Cambridge, Great Britain

The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1906

"In recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."

The Nobel Foundation

Notable Achievement:

• First mass spectrometer

"At first there were very few who believed in the existence of these bodies smaller than atoms. I was even told long afterwards by a distinguished physicist who had been present at my [1897] lecture at the Royal Institution that he thought I had been 'pulling their legs."

J.J. Thomson (1936). Recollections and Reflections. G. Bell and Sons: London. p. 341.