The clumsy Nobel Laureate
Stories from Physics
for 11-14
14-16
16-19
British physicist J. J. Thomson’s personal contributions to physics were substantial but he had a lasting legacy of discovery: seven of his research students went on to get Nobel Prizes, including his son, George. According to George, his father was “surprisingly clumsy . . . and though he could diagnose the faults of an apparatus with uncanny accuracy it was just as well not to let him handle it”.
References
R. Spangenburg, & D. Moser, Modern Science, 1896-1945, New York, NY, Facts on File, Inc., 2004, p.17
B. Lovett Cline, Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987, p. 13
