Old Cavendish Laboratory

The Old Cavendish Laboratory is a heavy, soot-stained brick building marked by a stone gatehouse featuring a carved stone archway. Inside these walls, J. J. Thomson identified the electron in eighteen ninety-seven, effectively splitting the atom and launching the era of particle physics. Researchers here eventually won thirty Nobel Prizes for discoveries ranging from DNA structure to the neutron. The laboratory began as a donation from the Duke of Devonshire, intended to provide Cambridge University with a dedicated facility for experimental physics.