Ebenezer Everett
J. J. Thomson wrote that Everett was a highly-skilled glassblower who took a very active and important part in the researches carried on in the Cavendish Laboratory, by students as well as by the professor. The great majority of these involved difficult glass blowing, which was nearly all done by Everett ... He made all the apparatus used in Thomson's experiments for the more than 40 years in which he acted as his assistant.[1]
From 'The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M.' by Lord Rayleigh [2]:-
'J.J.’s faithful assistant, Ebenezer Everett, was compelled to retire in 1930 on account of a breakdown in health. He suffered from heart weakness, combined with painful asthmatic attacks. ‘I do indeed thank you’, he wrote, for your great kindness to me. I have one disappointment, that is to leave you before you give up the laboratory. It has been my ambition to be with you as long as you were there.’
'He was then sixty-five years of age, fifty of which had been spent in the service of the University, and forty-one in the Cavendish Laboratory. It was estimated that he had made upwards of 5000 pieces of special apparatus for the workers there. Only a small minority of the research students were much use at this kind of work, and Everett was nearly always called in to supply their deficiencies and to teach them. He was not always patient, however, when his work was destroyed by rough handling, and he was called upon to do it all over again. Owing to the exceptional value of his services he was given the recognition of an honorary M.A. degree, which has been very rarely given in such cases. It was the proudest day of his life when he walked from the Senate House accompanied by his beloved chief, by whom he was generously pensioned. After three years of invalid life he died in 1933. Thomson, Rutherford, Aston, and others for whom and with whom he had worked, attended his funeral. He-was a vigorous Conservative in politics and a member of the West Chesterton Ward committee.'
The above source contains much information on Everett's work at the Cavendish Laboratory.