George Paget Thomson
1892 ~ 1975
Scientist Nobel Laureate
Master of Corpus Christi
and his wife
Kathleen Buchanan Thomson
1900 ~ 1941
Rt Rev. Sir George Adam Smith
George Paget Thomsom was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1937 for his work in discovering the wave like properties of the electron. The prize was jointly shared with Clinton Joseph Daivsson who made the same discovery independently.
George was born in Cambridge on 3rd May 1892. He was the son of Physicist and Nobel Laureate J.J. Thomson ~ who had won his Nobel Prize for discovering the electron as a particle.
George read Mathematics and Physics at Trinity College, Cambridge. When World War One broke out in 1914 he was commissioned into the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment. After service in France, he became a Fellow at Cambridge.
In 1924, George married Kathleen Buchanan Smith, daughter of the Very Reverend Sir George Adam Smith. They had four children, two sons and two daughters.
In 1930 George Paget Thomson was appointed Professor at Imperial College and in the late 1930's during the Second World War he specialised in Nuclear Physics and as a chairman of the 'Maud Commitee' in 1940 ~ 1941 he concluded that an Atomic Bomb was feasible.
In later life he continued this work on Nuclear Energy and also wrote works on aerodynamics and the value of Science in society.
George stayed at Imperial College until 1952 and became Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was Knighted in 1943 and died on the 10th September 1975 and is buried in the Churchyard of St. Andrew and St. Mary in Granchester, Cambridge.