Who is discovered electron

Thomson is credited with the discovery of the electron on the basis of his experiments with cathode rays in , various physicists, including William Crookes, Arthur Schuster, Philipp Lenard, and others, who had also conducted cathode ray experiments claimed that they deserved the credit. This chapter provides a general definition of discovery that can be used to help resolve the question, which, as it turns out, is a complex philosophical and historical one. The relationship between discovery and evidence, as well as what's so important about who discovered the electron, are issues also discussed in the present chapter.

Keywords: Crookes , discovery , electron , evidence , Lenard , Schuster , scientific discovery , J. Thomson , Thomson. Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content. To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.

All Rights Reserved. OSO version 0. University Press Scholarship Online. Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Modern Transistors. The Four Layer Diode. Discovery of the Electron Scientists worked with electricity long before they understood that current was made of electrons.

The cathode tube was a prime example. By switching on some voltage, scientists could make fluorescent streams of electricity travel from the bottom part of a glass tube to the top -- but no one knew how it worked. Some thought the rays were a wave traveling through a mysterious "ether" which they thought permeated all space.

Others thought the rays were streams of particles. Thomson decided to find out for sure. Thomson was a physics professor at Cambridge University in the UK.

He placed cathode tubes in electric and magnetic fields.