1896 went to Aachen to replace Philipp Eduard Anton von Lénárd, and set up a laboratory there to study electrostatic discharge in vacuum. 1897 began to study cathode rays. With the help of a high vacuum tube with Leonard window, he confirmed Jean-Baptiste Perrin's discovery two years ago that cathode rays are composed of negatively charged particles (electrons) moving at high speed. Almost at the same time that Joseph Thomson discovered electrons in Cambridge, Wayne measured the relationship between charge and mass of these particles in a different way from Thomson, and got the same result as Thomson, that is, their mass is only one thousandth of that of hydrogen atoms.
1898, Wayne studied the anode rays discovered by Eugen Goldstein and pointed out that their positive charges are equal to the negative charges of cathode rays. He measured their deviations under the influence of magnetic and electric fields and concluded that anode rays are composed of positively charged particles, which are not heavier than electrons.
The method used by Wayne formed mass spectrometry about 20 years later, which realized the accurate measurement of the mass of various atoms and their isotopes and the calculation of the energy released by nuclear reaction. 1900, Wayne published a theoretical paper on the electromagnetic basis of mechanics, and then he continued to study anode rays. In 19 12, he found that anode rays will lose and regain their charge when they collide with atoms of residual gas in an environment other than high vacuum. 19 18, he published the research results of anode ray again. He measured the cumulative decline of brightness after the rays left the cathode. Through these experiments, he deduced that the attenuation of atomic luminosity in classical physics corresponds to the finite time when atoms are active in quantum physics.
Wayne has made great contributions to probability theory and logic. His Logic of Opportunity in 1866 and Symbolic Logic in 188 1 enjoyed a high reputation at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century. He revised a classic definition of De Moivre's probability theory, that is, "if you succeed n times in m experiments, the probability of success is n/m", and changed it to "if you succeed n times in m experiments (where m is a large number), the probability of success is the limit value of n/m when m tends to infinity", but this definition still has some shortcomings. Related to this definition, he also studied the famous "St. Petersburg paradox". In logic, Wayne clarified some vague concepts in Boolean's research on the law of thinking in 1854. But its main achievement is to systematically explain and develop the geometric representation. He made a series of simple closed loops (circles or more complicated forms) to divide the plane into many intervals. Using this chart, Wayne expounded the basic principle of deductive reasoning. In order to further clarify, he also introduced some mathematical problems as examples. Although Leibniz had systematically used this logic diagram before Wayne, it is still called "venn diagram" today.
In addition to mathematics, Wayne has a special interest or skill, that is, making machines. He once made a cricket motive. When the Australian cricket team visited Cambridge on 1909, Wayne's cricket motivation was still in normal operation, and one of their players hit the air four times.