Abstract
It is now one hundred years since J J Thomson showed that cathode rays are composed of electrons, the lightest of the known charged particles. Yet a century later, after many spectacular advances in particle physics, it is curious that the two most elementary properties of the electron, its mass and charge, remain a deep mystery. In the modern theory of elementary particles, the Standard Model, the mass and charge of the electron cannot be calculated from first principles. Rather, the values measured in experiments are inserted into the theory “by hand”. Presumably at some time in the future these values will be understood from first principles, but at present no one knows why the charge and mass of the electron, or indeed any other elementary particle, have those particular values.
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