George Paget Thomson (3.05.1892-10.09.1975) was an English physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society (1930). He was the son of J. J. Thomson. He was born in Cambridge. He graduated from the University of Cambridge (1914) and worked there in 1919-22. In 1922-30 he was a professor at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), in 1930-52 at Imperial College of Science and Technology (London), and in 1952-62 he was head of a college at Cambridge.
His research was in the fields of atomic and nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, aerodynamics and electric discharges in gases. Independently of C. Davisson and L. Germer, in 1927 he discovered the diffraction of electrons, which proved experimentally the wave nature of electrons (Nobel Prize, 1937). He carried out studies on the geometry of electron diffraction patterns and on scattering theory.
Medals: D. Hughes (1939), Royal (1949), M. Faraday (1960).