New quantities have been invented to explain certain aspects of particle behavior. Another quantity explaining particle behavior is related to the fact that many particles occur in groups, called multiplets, in which the particles are of almost the same mass but differ in charge. The proton and neutron form such a multiplet. The new quantity describes mathematically the effect of changing a proton into a neutron, or vice versa, and was given the name isotopic spin. Isotopic spin actually has nothing to do with spin, but is represented by a vector that can have various orientations in an imaginary space known as isotopic spin space.
Isotopic spin is conserved only in the strong interactions.
Closely related to conservation laws are three symmetry principles that apply to changing the total circumstances of an event rather than changing a particular quantity. However, it was found in 1956 that parity is not conserved in the weak interactions, i.e., there are some possible particle decays whose mirror-image counterparts do not occur. The first subatomic particle to be discovered was the electron, identified in 1897 by J. J. Thomson. After the nucleus of the atom was discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford, the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen was recognized to be a single proton. In 1932 the neutron was discovered.