THOMSON, J. J.

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Conduction of Electricity through Gases. First edition, the copy of Bern Dibner (1897-1988), with the deaccessioned bookplate of his Burndy Library and the numbered "Heralds of Science" stamp: Dibner selected this as one of the 200 titles included in his landmark bibliography.In Conduction, John Joseph Thomson (1856-1940) brought together his studies of discharge phenomena into one theory, contending that cathode rays consisted of negatively charged particles almost 1,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom - particles now recognized as electrons. Conduction became the standard work on the subject and was later recognized in Thomson's receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1906. Writing in Heralds of Science, Dibner observes that Thomson's work on cathode rays "dissolved" the then-prevalent theory of the atom as the basis of the physical world.

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