J.J Thomson and His Plum-Pudding Model of the Atom

Short Story

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Over the past few days I have been busy with applications, one of which had an especially fun requirement, which went something like this: “write 1,000 words or less about an incident involving food.” After quite some thinking, I decided to go about the prompt like this:

It is truly incredible how you can simultaneously shape and shatter your reputation in a single evening. Let me explain. I am a shy man of 48 with an excessively large forehead which extends all the way to my hairline, somewhere at the peak of my head. As the Cavendish Professor of Physics, I spend most of my time between the university and home. Once a year, however, my research on the functioning of atoms is halted by a banquet which I would have gladly skipped were it not for my good friend and colleague Harold A. Wilson, who derives most of his daily happiness from eating large quantities of food in a very time-efficient manner. On the contrary, each year I have found it as dreary and excessive as the first. Though, I admit, many important scientists attend these banquets and the food is always surprisingly good, as far as English cuisine goes.

That year I got ready in my usual fashion. Suit, tie, lips puckered together like a turkey's bottom. Several red hairs decorated my grey mustache, something I despise as it somehow managed to destroy all my masculine looks.

At six-thirty I made my way to the university’s dining hall some steps from my apartment. Big social gatherings tend to make me nervous. I am a frail, moth of a man with always moving hands. What more, unfortunately whenever I feel anxious my rather large head inclined towards my right shoulder, as though my neck isn’t quite strong enough to hold it up.

“You simply have to stay for an hour,” I reassured myself, “then you can go back to sketching your particles until however late you’d like.”

What made that year’s banquet especially daunting was that I was at the cusp of finding the subatomic structure of the atom and I simply could not permit any distractions. What if, while I was busy eating shepherd’s pie, that Irishman George Johnston Stoney, with his ridiculous beard, found the answers I was looking for?

These thoughts were quickly disregarded upon entering the dining hall. It was laid out for a feast. Tall candles, roses, shining silverware, and above all, the faint scent of roasting meat brought a warm oozing of saliva to my mouth. Guests greedily milled around the buffet with plates in hand, and before I knew what I was doing, I was standing in line too.

The exact details of the evening I won’t specify, it went largely as it did every year. My colleagues Charles Glover Barkla and William Henry Bragg were bragging, excuse the pun, about crystal structures and x-rays to whoever would listen. My bright young pupil Ernst Rutherford sat squat in a corner, probably postulating the party’s half-life. Harold’s round, freckled face and rather sharp birdlike nose hovered next to the buffet’s cheese and wine section for most of the evening, his mouth like a large keyhole, shouting one incoherent thing or another to whoever listened. After a while I spotted Charles Wilson who, as always, sat alone at the far end of the furthest table, his tongue making an appearance every now and then to lick at his mustache, as though in search for some left over stew. Everything, in short, was as it always was.

That is, until the pudding arrived. Six giant platters full of everything one could imagine.

Harold, seeing I had somehow managed to position myself in such a way as to be first in line for the pudding, clapped my back with his firm hand and shouted: “when’d you get here?”

We were silently concentrated as we pilled our plates with whatever fit.

“Come on, I’ll eat what you don’t,” he assured me.

We sat down at one of the long tables as Harold rambled about electrons. In front of us sat a boy around half my age. One of those rich, English types. Smooth, kind, though perhaps somewhat superficial, overweight and infinitely dull.

Spiteful thoughts suddenly made their way into my drowsy mind. I was tired and could not help thinking he had one of those annoying faces which, without reason, I could not stand. Somehow it was all mouth — full, wet lips — the lower lip hanging downwards at the center, permanently open, shaped in such a way as to invariably be ready to receive anything his fork offered.

Then I noticed it. Before him sat an entire plum pudding. He had not taken one small piece as was etiquette, but the whole thing.

“The audacity,” I thought, unable to look away. The plums swam before my eyes like tiny electrons embedded in a positively charged pudding. I started to giggle. Then, very suddenly, I stopped. An idea hit me hard and quick. My eyes and mouth, even my nostrils opening wide in shocked surprise. I jumped up unable to refrain myself, and clutched Harold’s shoulder tightly as he stared at me, his small eyes like two raisins on a porcelain plate.

Tiny negatively charges electrons in a positively charged pudding.

“Harold, Harold!” I screamed, “I have it!” My mouth twitched with rapid little downward movements that continued for a while after I finished speaking.

The following day Harold assured me that everyone had stopped what they were doing in order to look at me. I, on the other hand, could see nothing but the plum pudding.

“Eureka!” I was so excited I even walked with a funny step, treading softly as though the floor was just too hot for the soles of my feet, all the way to the door, then to my apartment, constantly repeating my finding so as not to forget it.

My reputation was, though not ruined, tarnished. For a very short while anyway. Two years later I received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the “Plum-Pudding Model of the Atom” and still remember that banquet fondly.