Thomson, Sir George Paget

Thomson, Sir George Paget, 1892–1975, English physicist; son of Sir Joseph John Thomson. He was professor of natural philosophy at the Univ. of Aberdeen (1922–30) and from 1930 to 1952 was professor of physics at Imperial College, Univ. of London. In 1952, he became master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He shared with C. J. Davisson the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for their simultaneous, independent discovery of diffraction phenomena in the electron. In 1943 he was knighted. His works include The Atom (1930, 6th ed. 1962), The Wave Mechanics of Free Electrons (1930), Theory and Practice of Electron Diffraction (with William Cochrane, 1939), and The Inspiration of Science (1961).