Year awarded: 1906
Year of discovery: 1897
Joseph John Thomson: 1856 – 1940
Basically Thomson discovered the electron; the first sub-atomic particle… kind of a big deal I guess. (And along the way the discovery of isotopes and the invention of the mass spectrometer) He also put forward one of the earliest models of the Atom: The Plum Pudding Model. This of course turned out to be totally wrong, but it laid the groundwork for future discoveries. Obviously he was a pretty bright spark, and especially gifted in mathematics. He went into uni at the tender age of 14 at Owens College Manchester. He moved on to Trinity College Cambridge and eventually succeeded Lord Rayleigh as Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics.
Whilst not a sportsman himself, he was an avid fan of the schools cricket and rugby teams. Good stuff that…
One of the things that stands out to me are the sheer number and quality of students and assistants that old JJ had over the years. To name a few: Wilson, Rutherford, Oppenheimer, WH Bragg, L Bragg Born, van der Pol, Bohr, Bose. Seven people who worked under him went on to win their own Nobel prizes, including his son George. He was knighted 2 years after he received his Nobel prize.
Sir JJ died in 1940 in Cambridge.