~~G.J.+Stoney~~

[] Name: George Johnstone Stoney Date of birth and death: 1826-1911 Country of origin: Ireland Discoveries: 1874 introduced the concept of an electron

Stoney was born in the Irish midlands to a family who had lost their land at the time of the Great Famine. He attended Trinity College graduating with a M.A. in 1852. In 1848 he became the first regular Astronomical Assistant to William Parsons who had built the world's largest telescope. In 1852, Stoney became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen's College Galway. In 1857, he moved to Dublin as Secretary of the Queen's University of Ireland. While in Dublin he was honorary secretary to the Royal Dublin Societyy for over 20 years, and then served as a vice-president. He then became superintendent of Civil Service Examinations in Ireland, a post he held until his retirement in 1893.

Stoney published seventy-five scientific papers in a variety of journals, making significant contributions to cosmic physics and to the theory of gases. He estimated the number of molecules in a cubic millimetre of gas from data obtained from the kinetic theory of gases. Stoney's most important scientific work was the conception and calculation of the magnitude of the "atom of electricity". In 1891, he proposed the term 'electron' to describe the fundamental unit of electrical charge, and his contributions to research in this area laid the foundations for the eventual discovery of the particle by J.J. Thomson in 1897.

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