George Paget Thomson - Biography

Biography

Thomson was born in Cambridge, England, the son of physicist and Nobel laureate J. J. Thomson and Rose Elisabeth Paget, the daughter of the professor of medicine at the University of Cambridge. Thomson went to The Perse School, Cambridge before going on to read mathematics and physics at Trinity College, Cambridge, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he was commissioned into the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment. After brief service in France, he worked on aerodynamics at Farnborough and elsewhere. He resigned his commission as a Captain in 1920.

In 1924, Thomson married Kathleen Buchanan Smith, daughter of the Very Rev. Sir George Adam Smith. They had four children, two sons and two daughters. Kathleen died in 1941.

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