Short answers, pulled from the story.
On the 30th of April 1897, Thomson announced that cathode rays were composed of negatively charged particles more than a thousand times lighter than a hydrogen atom. These particles, which he called corpuscles and which are now called electrons, were the first subatomic particles ever identified.
Thomson received the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases. His discovery that cathode rays were composed of a universal subatomic particle was the central achievement the prize recognised.
In 1904, Thomson proposed that the atom was a sphere of positive matter within which electrons orbited rapidly, distributed through a uniform sea of positive charge. The model was later disproved when Ernest Rutherford showed that the positive charge is concentrated in a tiny nucleus.
In 1912, Thomson and Francis William Aston channelled neon ions through magnetic and electric fields and detected two deflection parabolas on a photographic plate, identifying neon-20 and neon-22 as distinct isotopes. This was the first use of mass spectrometry, later developed into a general method by Aston and A. J. Dempster.
Seven of Thomson's students went on to win Nobel Prizes, including Ernest Rutherford, Francis Aston, and Edward Appleton. His son George Paget Thomson also won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for the experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals.
Thomson's ashes rest in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Isaac Newton and his former student Ernest Rutherford. He died on the 30th of August 1940, while serving as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.