George Paget Thomson

Thomson, George Paget 

Born May 3, 1892, in Cambridge; died there Sept. 10,1975. British physicist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1930). Son of J. J. Thomson.

G. P. Thomson graduated from Cambridge University in 1914. After serving in the army in 1914 and 1915, he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force from 1915 to 1919. He did research at the Cavendish Laboratory from 1919 to 1922. Thomson was a professor at the University of Aberdeen from 1922 to 1930 and at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London from 1930 to 1952. From 1952 to 1962 he was master of Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University.

In 1926 and 1927, Thomson experimentally discovered and studied electron diffraction independently of C. J. Davisson and L. H. Germer. He received a Nobel Prize for this work in 1937. The equipment and methods devised by Thomson for the study of electron diffraction patterns greatly influenced the development of the experimental procedures used in the study of electron diffraction.

WORKS

The Atom, 5th ed. London–New York–Toronto, 1956.
Theory and Practice of Electron Diffraction. London, 1939. (With W. Cochrane.)
In Russian translation:
Predvidimoe budushchee. Moscow, 1958.
Dukh nauki. Moscow, 1970.

I. D. ROZHANSKII