Joseph Thomson was a British physicist best known for his discovery of the electron in 1897. He conducted experiments using cathode rays and demonstrated that these rays were composed of negatively charged particles, which he called "corpuscles." This groundbreaking work laid the foundation for modern atomic theory and earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. Thomson also contributed to the development of the plum pudding model of the atom, which proposed that atoms were made up of a positively charged "soup" with negatively charged electrons embedded within it. His research significantly advanced the field of particle physics and influenced future scientists, including Ernest Rutherford.