Thomson, George Paget

Born Cambridge, England, 3 May 1892

Died Cambridge, England, 10 September 1975

British experimental physicist Sir George Paget Thomson shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with Clinton J. Davisson for the discovery of electron diffraction, which demonstrated that subatomic particles also have wave properties, as part of the wave-particle dualism of quantum mechanics. He also chaired the committee that persuaded the British government, early in World War II, to become involved in the development of nuclear weapons.

George Thomson was the only son of the famous Joseph John Thomson (1856–1940; Nobel Prize in Physics 1906) and his wife Rose Paget, and he grew up in the privileged environment of the Cambridge elite. Thomson received his early education at the Perse School in Cambridge. He entered Trinity College in Cambridge in 1910, and in 1914 he earned first-class honors in mathematics and physics. Thomson took up postgraduate work under his father at the Cavendish Laboratory and...