George Paget Thomson was born in 1892 at Cambridge, the son of
the late Sir J J. Thomson (then Professor of Physics at Cambridge University),
a Nobel Prize winner who, more than anyone else, was responsible for the
discovery of the electron, and Rose Elisabeth Paget, daughter of the late
Sir George Paget, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge.
George Thomson went to school in Cambridge, and then up to the
University. As an undergraduate at Trinity College
he took mathematics followed by physics, and had done a year's
research under his father when the 1914-1918 war broke out.
He joined the Queen's Regiment of Infantry as a Subaltern and
served for a short time in France, but returned to work on the
stability of aeroplanes and other aerodynamical problems at
Farnborough, and continued to work on this kind of problem at
various establishments throughout the war, apart from eight
months in the United States attached to the British War
Mission.
After the war he spent three years as Fellow and Lecturer at
Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, and continued his research on
physics. He was then appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy
(as physics is called in Scotland) at the University of
Aberdeen, a post he held for eight years. At Aberdeen he
carried out experiments on the behaviour of electrons going
through very thin films of metals, which showed that electrons
behave as waves in spite of being particles. For this work he
later shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with C.J. Davisson of the
Bell Telephone Laboratories, who had arrived at the same
conclusions by a different kind of experiment. The process of
electron diffraction which these experiments established to be
possible has been widely used in the investigation of the
surfaces of solids.
In the winter of 1929-1930 Thomson visited Cornell University,
Ithaca, N.Y. as a "non-resident" lecturer. In 1930 he was
appointed Professor at Imperial College in the University of London;
he held this post until 1952, when he became Master of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, retiring from the latter in
1962.
During his time at Imperial College he became interested in
nuclear physics, and when the fission of uranium by neutron was
discovered at the beginning of 1939 he was struck by its military
and other possibilities, and persuaded the British Air Ministry
to procure a ton of uranium oxide for experiments. These
experiments were incomplete at the outbreak of war, when Thomson
went back to the Royal Aircraft Establishment to work on a series
of war problems, including magnetic mines. A year later he was
made Chairman of the British Committee set up to investigate the
possibilities of atomic bombs. This committee reported in 1941
that a bomb was possible, and Thomson was authorized to give this
report to the American scientists Vannevar Bush and James
Conant.
He spent the next year as Scientific Liaison Officer at Ottawa,
and for part of this time was in close touch with the American
atomic bomb effort. On returning to England he was appointed
Vice-Chairman of the Radio Board and later became Scientific
Adviser to the Air Ministry.
After the war he returned to work at Imperial College, and early
in 1946 became interested in the possibilities of nuclear power
from deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Some experiments bearing on this
were started at Imperial College under Dr. Ware, but Thomson's
work was theoretical. Later, because of the requirements of
secrecy, this work was transferred to the Associated Electrical
Industry's Research Laboratories at Aldermaston, where Thomson
continued to act as Consultant.
Sir George T. is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has received
the Royal Medal and the Hughes Medal of that Society. He is a
Doctor of Science at Cambridge, Hon. D.Sc. (Lisbon), Hon. LL.D.
(Aberdeen), Hon. Sc. D. ( Dublin ), Sheffield, University of
Wales and Reading. He has written a book on aerodynamics and
other scientific works. His published works also include a
popular book on The Atom and The Foreseeable Future,
published in 1955, and The Inspiration of Science,
published in 1962. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and of the Lisbon Academy, and a Corresponding
Member of the Austrian Academy.
In 1924 he married Kathleen Buchanan, daughter of the Very Rev.
Sir George Adam Smith. They have two sons and two daughters. Ship
models form part of his recreations.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Sir George Paget Thomson died on September 10, 1975.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1937