He was a good lecturer, encouraged his students, and devoted considerable attention to the wider problems of science teaching at university and secondary levels. Of all the physicists associated with determining the structure of the atom, Thomson remained most closely aligned to the chemical community.
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. In Thomson published an influential monograph urging chemists to use the mass spectrograph in their analyses. Thomson received various honors, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in and a knighthood in He also had the great pleasure of seeing several of his close associates receive their own Nobel Prizes, including Rutherford in chemistry and Aston in chemistry Access more than , print volumes, rare books and manuscripts, archival materials, and historical photographs.
Explore the oral history collection at the Science History Institute, with interviews dating back to Sir Joseph John Thomson, often known as J. His father, a bookseller, wanted him to be an engineer, but did not have the fee for J. His professor of mathematics recognized his brilliance, and he was encouraged to apply for a scholarship at Trinity College in Cambridge. He was accepted in and became a Fellow in , when he became Second Wrangler a student who has completed the third year of mathematics with first-class honors.
The highest-scoring student is named the Senior Wrangler, the second-highest is the Second Wrangler, etc. He was chosen Master of Trinity in and guided the college until shortly before his death. In , Thomson became Cavendish Professor of Physics.
Thomson returned to America in to deliver six lectures on electricity and matter at Yale University. They contained some important suggestions as to the structure of the atom. He discovered a method for separating different kinds of atoms and molecules by the use of positive rays, an idea developed by Aston, Dempster and others towards the discovery of many isotopes.
In addition to those just mentioned, he wrote the books, The Structure of Light , The Corpuscular Theory of Matter , Rays of Positive Electricity , The Electron in Chemistry and his autobiography, Recollections and Reflections , among many other publications. Thomson, a recipient of the Order of Merit, was knighted in He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in and was President during ; he received the Royal and Hughes Medals in and , and the Copley Medal in Paget, K.
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