George Paget Thomson

British physicist

Born: May 3, 1892 · Died: September 10, 1975

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Who was George Paget Thomson?

Sir George Paget Thomson (3 May 1892 – 10 September 1975) was a British experimental physicist who shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics with Clinton Davisson "for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals." His father, J. J. Thomson, won the Nobel Prize in 1906 "for his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases". George Paget Thomson was born in Cambridge, England, the son of physicist and Nobel laureate J. J. Thomson and Rose Elisabeth Paget, the daughter of George Edward Paget. Thomson attended The Perse School, before going on to read mathematics and physics at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1913, he went to the Cavendish Laboratory to do research under his father, until the outbreak of World War I the following year, when he was commissioned into the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment.

Historical significance

It has been said that the elder Thomson won the Nobel for showing the electron is a particle, the younger for showing it is a wave.

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