Well, the answer to the question is the Anglo-Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney FRS (1826 – 1911). He introduced the concept, as the "fundamental unit quantity of electricity", as early as 1874 and 1881, and the word came in 1891. In 1897 J.J. Thomson discovered what he called the "corpuscles" in the cathode rays. Now it comes the real question: It seems to me that this fact is very much unknown by most physicists. Furthermore, I know only a couple of authors (Edmund Whittaker and Paul Langevin) who explicitly mention his name in theirs writings. But it seems fully ignored by all the rest. It seems to me rather weird, and I would like to know your opinion about this question.
The Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Johnstone_Stoney
The Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney (1826-1911).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Johnstone_Stoney
Remark: I wrote the above answer without having read the text following the headline on this page - the reason for this being that the question had appeared on the right-hand side of my browser while responding to a different question on RG; the text on the right-hand side of my browser showed only the headline of the question and further clicking on it, I was directly led to the editing box, without being shown the text following the headline.
I think proposing the concept of electron or the name of it is not the same as discovering it. Benjamin Franklin too proposed that electricity is carried by an entity, though he incorrectly assigned its sign, causing our definition of electric current to go opposite direction from electron flow. Ancient Greek and Indians has also long pondered about a theory about atom. On the other hand, people also have had access to electron beams from cathode rays, made a lot of guess what it is and some even (incorrectly) measured its mass to charge ratio. Thompson, however, is credited for the "discovery" because he accurately measured the mass and charge of it, showing that cathode rays are made of entities that are shockingly small compared to anything that was known before, and the exact same entity is obtained regardless of type of source, hence the modern concept of electron as a fundamental particle is born.
Xiaolei,
I agree that proposing a concept or a name is not the same as discovering something. No discussion about that. Surely you have heard about the Greek philosopher Democritus. Every schoolchild has heard about him as a pioneer on the idea of atom. He did not discover them. Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. Marie Curie coined the term. Who is better known? Well, there might be more examples. The main point of my question is simply why Stoney is almost forgotten, in such a way when I have asked to close colleagues about him, nobody has heard about him.
Miguel
Hi Miguel, I guess the scientific community as a whole usually give relatively little credit for coining a term. I think Marie Curie was primarily honored for her pioneering research into the nature of radiation, which by far outweighs coining the term. I think that is what is shared by Thompson and Curie--marvelous scientific ingenuity which provided very deep knowledge of their respective topics, which had tremendous impact on the respective field.
A more recent analog (but not as important) was with the discovery of methane on Mars. Please note that on Earth CH4 is mostly of biological origin thus it could be indicative of life on Mars. Back in the 90s we wrote many proposals where (based on our Mars' terrestrial analog studies and math. modeling) we have predicted not only the existence of methane on Mars, but also the mechanism of its possible origin from CH4 gas hydrates in the Martian subsurface. Eventually we got some funding and have published 2 articles. And we have submitted our articles before the 1st observations of Mars' methane by the PFS instrument on the Mars Express mission. A few years later 2 authors published a review, which cited our 2 initial papers, and some reason they got more citations than we did. I attribute that to the simplicity of their title: "Methane clathrate hydrates as a potential source for martian atmospheric methane".
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Theoretical Physics