Whereever you look, it is JJ Thomson who is considered the discoverer of the electron as a fundamental sub-atomic particle in 1897. But, if you look further, there had been a long discussion about the nature of cathode rays; in short, British physicists assigned a particle character to those rays (Sir William Crookes, a friend of Tesla’s), whereas German physicists in this controversy opted for a wave character. Tesla, in a newspaper article (”On Roentgen rays”, Electrical Review, March 18, 1896), wrote: “I see in these shocks a further evidence of larger particles thrown off from the bulb“. In his discussion about the topic with Thomson, Tesla grounded his conclusion on the personal experience of a “sometimes even painful, shock in the eye“. This characterizes Tesla’s method: it wasn’t scientific in a lot of senses, but he discovered scientific phenomena earlier than his contemporaries. As Boris Tadic, president of Serbia, puts it: “There are not many from this region who grew to realize their visions. Those who did are our common heritage.”
