THOMSON, SIR J.J.

born Dec. 18, 1856, Cheetham Hill, near Manchester, Eng. died Aug. 30, 1940, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire Sir J.J. Thomson, detail of a pencil drawing by Walter Monnington, 1932; in the National Portrait in full Sir Joseph John Thomson 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.