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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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J.J. Thomson
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(Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940, kt 1908) Physicist who discovered the electron while working at the *Cavendish Laboratory, of which he was director from 1884 to 1918. His work on cathode rays in the 1890s led him to conclude that atoms of all kinds contain identical smaller particles, which he at first called corpuscles but later changed to electrons (a term coined a few years earlier by G.J. Stoney). In 1906 he received the Nobel prize for physics, for his work into the electrical conductivity of gases. In addition to his own scientific genius, Thomson was a superb director of a team; seven of his assistants later won Nobel prizes, as also did his son George Thomson (1892–1975).
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