Royal Society Publishing (royalsocietypublishing.org), 2026-10-08
Investigator (STEP I), project Thompson-JJ. DOIs found through the Crossref API (query.author=Thomson, Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 1913-1923). Article pages read in Chrome; PDF links redirect to the abstract/first-page extract for Chrome and return HTML to curl, so full texts were not obtained (scanned PDFs exist; "Scanned images copyright 2017, Royal Society").
Thomson papers in Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 1913-1923 (own work, priority 1)
| Year | Vol., pages | DOI | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1913 | 89, 1-20 | 10.1098/rspa.1913.0057 | Bakerian Lecture: Rays of positive electricity (Wikipedia cites it, doi-access free, as the first report of H3+) |
| 1914 | 89, 554-560 | 10.1098/rspa.1914.0023 | The transmission of cathode rays through matter |
| 1922 | 101, 290-299 | 10.1098/rspa.1922.0044 | On the analysis by positive rays of the heavier constituents of the atmosphere; of the gases in a vessel in which radium chloride had been stored for 13 years, and of the gases given off by deflagrated metals |
| 1922 | 102, 197-209 | 10.1098/rspa.1922.0081 | The scattering of hydrogen positive rays, and the existence of a powerful field of force in the hydrogen molecule |
| 1923 | 104, 1-24 and 192-212 | 10.1098/rspa.1923.0090, .0102 | X-rays and beta-rays by the cloud method (probably G. P. Thomson or another Thomson; author initials not checked) |
| 1923 | 104, 115-120 | 10.1098/rspa.1923.0097 | Test of a theory of radiation (author initials not checked) |
1922 paper (rspa.1922.0044): first page read
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1922.0044 - Sir James Dewar supplied "large quantities of the residues obtained from the evaporation of many thousand tons of liquid air", stored on charcoal; Thomson analysed them by the positive-ray method with a more powerful induction coil, replacing wax joints with a platinised-glass, electro-coppered joint (method of Mr. Roebuck, Phys. Rev. 28, 264, 1909) to stop outgassing; gas flowed from the charcoal vessel through a fine capillary; a reference photograph was taken with air just before. [web, p.290] - The title shows the paper also analysed gas from a vessel where radium chloride had been stored 13 years, and gases from "deflagrated metals" (exploded wires). The deflagration part is very probably his test of the 1922 Wendt and Irion claim that exploding tungsten wires produce helium [memory, medium: the link is inferred from date and subject; read the paper to confirm]. - Bears on claim 5 (helium and neon from bombarded matter): this is Thomson's own later test of gas evolution from matter under violent excitation. Its result is not yet read.
H. Kragh, "To be or not to be: the early history of H3 and H3+", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 370 (1978), 5225 (13 Nov 2012)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article/370/1978/5225/45340/To-be-or-not-to-be-the-early-history-of-H3-and-H3 (abstract only; full text paywalled; DOI not recorded) - Abstract: triatomic hydrogen became a major research area only after 1980, "but its history goes back to J. J. Thomson's discovery in 1911"; H3 was suggested as early as 1895; chemists and physicists stopped believing in the neutral H3 molecule by the mid-1930s; Bohr examined H3 in 1919; "While H3 was abandoned, H3+ was not", and its existence "was firmly established". [web] - Bears on claim 5 (the mass-3 line called X3 / H3): a historian's account that Thomson's mass-3 ion is the H3+ ion, now well established (and important in interstellar chemistry), while the neutral H3 molecule he also argued for was abandoned.