Joseph John Thomson was born in Cheetam Hill, a district of Manchester, England, on December 18, 1856. Also known as «JJ« Thomson, the scientist studied engineering at Owens College, now part of the University of Manchester, and then mathematics in Cambridge.
In 1890 JJJ Thomson married Rose Elizabeth Paget, daughter of Sir Edward George Paget, with whom I had two children: a girl named Joan Paget Thomson and a boy, George Paget Thomson.
The latter would become a famous scientist, obtaining in 1937, a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with electrons.
From a young age, Thomson focused his studies on the structure of atoms, thus discovering the existence of electrons and isotopes, among other contributions.
In 1906, Thomson received the Nobel Prize in Physics, “in recognition of the great merit of his theoretical and experimental research on the conduction of electricity through gases,” among other awards for his work. (one)
Something valuable that this character left us without a doubt was Thomson’s atomic model that was the structure that the English physicist attributed to the atoms. For the scientist, atoms were a sphere of positive charge.
In 1908 he was knighted by the British Crown and served as an Honorary Professor of Physics at Cambridge and at the Royal Institute in London.
He died on August 30, 1940, at the age of 83, in the city of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The physicist was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton. (2)