Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

J.J. Thomson (born December 18, 1856, Cheetham Hill, near Manchester, England—died August 30, 1940, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) was an English physicist who helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908. Thomson was the son of a bookseller in a suburb of Manchester. When he was only 14, he entered Owens College, now the University of Manchester....