Thomson, Sir George Paget 1892-1975
English physicist and Nobel Prize winner

The son of J J Thomson, he was born and educated in Cambridge, where he became a Fellow of Trinity College. He served in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, was Professor of Physics at Aberdeen University (1922-30) and Imperial College, London (1930-52), and became Master of Corpus Christi at Cambridge (1952-62). In 1927 Thomson and Alexander Reid were the first to notice that a beam of electrons could produce circular interference fringes, firm evidence for Louis-Victor de Broglie's theory that moving particles have wave-like properties. In 1937 Thomson shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Clinton J L Davisson for the discovery of electron diffraction by crystals. During World War II, Thomson advised the government on the making of a superbomb, and after the war supported the peaceful exploitation of nuclear power. He was scientific adviser to the UN Security Council (1946-47) and for his contributions to electrical science he was awarded the Faraday Medal by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (1960). He was elected FRS in 1930, and knighted in 1943.