Joseph John Thomson was born 18 December 1856 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Lancashire,

England.

His early education was in small private schools where he demonstrated talent and interest in
science. In 1870 he was admitted to Owens College in Manchester (now University of
Manchester) at the unusually young age of 14.

He moved on to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1876. In 1890, Thomson got married with Rose
Elisabeth Paget.

He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1906, "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and
experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases."

He was knighted in 1908 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1912.

In 1918 he became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained until his death.
Joseph John Thomson died on 30 August 1940.

Thomson performed a series of experiments on cathode ray tubes, which led to the
discovery of electrons. In 1887 he discovered the electron and proposed a model in which
the atom was positive charge.
In this model it was known that 1) electrons are negatively-charged particles and 2) atoms
are neutrally-charged.
So the positive sphere is the pudding and the electrons are the encrusted plums.

Other work
In 1906, Thomson demonstrated that hydrogen had only a single electron per atom.

He also discovered the isotopes and invented the mass spectrometer.