Science Fact Finder | Chemistry and Physics - Who Is Generally Regarded As The Person Who Discovered The Electron, The Proton, And The Neutron?

Who is generally regarded as the person who discovered the electron, the proton, and the neutron?

British physicist (a scientist specializing in the interaction between matter and energy) Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940) is generally credited with discovering the electron, as well as with founding modern atomic physics. In 1897, Thomson researched the travel of electricity through gases. This led to the important discovery that rays emitted by cathodes (negatively charged electrodes) consisted of negatively charged particles called electrons. The discovery of the electron, in turn, was instrumental in determining the structure of the atom, the smallest unit of matter.

New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) discovered a positively charged subatomic particle, the proton, in 1919. He also predicted the existence of neutral subatomic particles, or neutrons. Neutrons were later...

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