English physicist who discovered the electron using a cathode ray tube in 1897. He calculated its mass to charge ratio and proposed the plum pudding model of the atom. In Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings (1883), he presented a theory of atoms as vortex filaments corresponding to the tubes or lines of force in field theory. Independently of Nernst he explained why compounds ionize easily in water. The explanation, called the Nernst-Thomson rule, holds that it is difficult for charged ions to attract each other through insulating water molecules, so they dissociate.

Rutherford