Nobel Prize in Physics Recipient. Sir Joseph John Thomson received world-wide recognition for his contributions to physics, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, he received this coveted award "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases." Along with his many contributions to science, he helped revolutionize the knowledge of the atomic structure by his discovery of the electron in 1897. Born in a suburb of Manchester, he was son of a bookshop owner and a factory worker. He enrolled in Manchester's Owens College in 1870, entered Trinity College at Cambridge as a minor scholar in 1876, became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1880, when he was Second Wrangler and Second Smith’s Prizeman in mathematics, received his PhD in 1883 and was awarded the Adam Prize for “Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings” in 1884. He remained at Cambridge for the rest of his life, becoming Lecturer in 1883 and Master in 1918. On December 22, 1884, he succeeded 1904 Nobel Prize recipient, Sir John William Strutt as Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, passing over older, more experienced professors. During his time as lecturer at Cambridge, women were not allowed to be students at Cambridge, but could attend his lectures. One of the women attending his lectures, Rose Elisabeth Paget, would become his wife. The couple had two children: Joan, who became an author and George Paget Thomson, who received the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics. Besides his research contributions, he was an excellent teacher with students from around the world attending his lectures and several of his students receiving the Nobel Prize. He financed two additions to the laboratory building, which were funded mainly from student fees with little support from other sources. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was awarded the Royal Medal in 1894, Hughes Medal and the Hodgkins Medal in 1902, Elliott Cesson Medal in 1910, Copley Medal in 1914, the Franklin Medal in 1922 and the Mascart Medal from France in 1927. He received the Order of Merit and was knighted in 1908 by Edward VII. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, serving at the society's president from 1916 to 1920. He held honorary degrees from many major colleges in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. He visited the United States in 1896 presenting a course of four lectures at Princeton University and in 1904 gave six lectures at Yale University. He successful 1903 textbook, “Conduction of Electricity through Gases,” was updated in two volumes with his son's input in 1928 and 1933. Among the many other publications to his credit were “The Structure of Light” and “The Corpuscular Theory of Matter” in 1907, “Rays of Positive Electricity” in 1913, “The Electron in Chemistry” in 1923 and his autobiography, “Recollections and Reflections” in 1936. To recognize other scientists, the Thomson Medal Award, which is sponsored by the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, along with the Institute of Physics Joseph Thomas Medal and Prize are awarded in his honor. Besides making atomic physics a modern science, he was an avid fan of the Cambridge cricket and rugby teams, enjoyed the theater, and was a gardener.