Celebrating 100 years of particle physics* A ThinkQuest Project created by Team Number 10380 Rahul Jain (Team Leader) and Shaheen Gandhi J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, sparking the search for more sub-atomic particles and creating the field of particle physics. We dedicate this site to him for all that his discovery precipitated. By the way, it's also the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the pion. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, pages will load and the site is fully enjoyable, but some JavaScript may not work.