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Thompson, Benjamin: see Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count, 1753–1814, American-British scientist and administrator, b. Woburn, Mass. In 1776 he went to England, where he served (1780–81) as undersecretary of the colonies, conducting significant experiments with gunpowder in his
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Thompson, Benjamin (1919– ) architect, urban designer; born in St. Paul, Minn. He attended the University of Virginia before graduating from Yale, then served in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1941–45). After the war, he and some young architect friends at Harvard's architecture school invited the school's head, Walter Gropius, to start a firm with them; it was known as Architects' Collaborative and took the lead in designing classic modern buildings. In 1953, Thompson and his wife Jane Thompson, an editor and curator, started Design Research, a Cambridge (Mass.)-based firm that imported and sold the latest in European furnishings and housewares. Thompson is credited with suggesting (about 1967) that Boston renovate its fading Faneuil Hall-Quincy Market neighborhood to attract people. He and his firm won the design competition (and developer James Rouse became their collaborator). Their success in Boston led to the firm—now Benjamin Thompson Associates—to take on other renovation projects such as the Union Station in Washington, D.C., and the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul, Minn. Thompson won the American Institute of Architects' gold medal in 1992.

Thompson, Benjamin (often called by title, Count Rumford) (1753–1814) scientist, administrator; born in Woburn, Mass. He showed a youthful aptitude for mathematics and science, and after a three-year apprenticeship with a Salem, Mass., merchant, he studied medicine and taught school briefly. In 1772 he married a wealthy widow and accepted a British commission as major in a New Hampshire regiment. As the American Revolution began to heat up, he seemed unable to join one side or the other, but when he was denied a commission in the Continental army, he cast his lot with the Loyalists; after the British evacuated Boston (March 1776), he fled to England (and left his wife behind). Always adept at ingratiating himself with the powerful, he got himself elected to the prestigious Royal Society (1779). He returned to America as a lieutenant colonel (1781–83) and saw some combat—he would be knighted in 1784—and then went on to serve the Prince of Bavaria for many of the next 18 years. While in Munich, he helped improve conditions for both the Bavarian army and the poor and unemployed; for his services he was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire—choosing for his title the name of his former wife's hometown, Rumford (now Concord), N.H. Between 1795–1802 he spent much time in England, but in 1803 he settled permanently in France; he was briefly married to the widow of the great French chemist, Lavoisier. Although something of a dilettante-tinkerer—he invented a calorimeter, a photometer, and the drip-coffee maker—he did carry on scientific and mechanical experiments, and in his studies of heat he made a major contribution: by observing the boring of cannons in Munich, he was the first to understand that heat is a form of motion. Never shy about promoting himself, he endowed the Rumford Medals of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the Rumford chair of science at Harvard.