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Class 11 chemistry Notes - Discovery Of Electrons And Thomson’s Model Of Atom NCERT Chemistry class 11: Sir Joseph John Thomson (Sir J.J Thomson) was an English physicist, who helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908. Several scientists, such as  William Prout and Norman Lockyer , had suggested that atoms were built up from a more fundamental unit, but they envisioned this unit to be the size of the smallest atom, hydrogen.  Thomson in 1897  was the first to suggest that one of the fundamental units was more than 1,000 times smaller than an atom, suggesting some subatomic particle. Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode rays that led to the discovery of negatively charged particles, now known as  electrons . The CRT(Cathode Ray Tube) consists of several elements, starting with a tube that’s vacuum sealed to keep