By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

British physicist Joseph John Thomson announced the discovery of the electron, the negatively charged particles that surround the nucleus in an atom, back in 1897. Thomson, a professor at Cambridge University was considered a mathematical genius. However, it seems he was a bit of klutz in the laboratory.

"Thomson was not particularly gifted with apparatus," says University of Bristol professor Brian Foster.  "It is said that when his graduate students heard him coming down the corridor, they hid their most delicate pieces of apparatus to avoid the possibility that he should break them."

Nevertheless, Thomson won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906, was knighted in 1908, and served as president of the Royal Society from 1915-20.

Thomson announcement began a process of discussion, conjecture and experiment that continues to this day.  Recent research suggests that the electron may consist of other particles.  And a central mystery remains, namely, while the electron appears to have mass, it doesn't appear seem to take up any space.

"This is still one of the outstanding problems of particle physics," Foster says. Scientists are currently using the electron to probe the structure of matter and the origins of the universe, recreating in the lab the conditions that were present in the universe when matter emerged during the Big Bang.

In addition to particle accelerators (aka atom smashers), nuclear energy, radar, lasers, electron microscopes and long-range sensing equipment, the discovery of electron also led to the creation of  such modern day mainstays as the microwave oven, the semiconductor and television.

For more information on the electron's centenary, see the June 16, 1997  issue of Chemical and Engineering News.