4 Quotes by Joseph John Thomson

His work was so great that it cannot be compassed in a few words. His death is one of the greatest losses ever to occur to British science.{Describing Ernest Rutherford upon his death at age 66. Thomson, then 80 years old, was once his teacher.}

A scientific theory is a tool and not a creed.

The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!

I venture to give an alternative method of regarding the processes occurring in the electric field, which I have often found useful and which is, from a mathematical point of view, equivalent to Maxwell’s Theory.