Harold Warris Thompson

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Harold Warris Thompson 1951 at EUCMOS I in Basel (Switzerland)
Harold Warris Thompson 1951 at EUCMOS I in Basel (Switzerland)

Sir Harold Warris Thompson (born February 15, 1908 in Wombwell , Yorkshire , † December 31, 1983 ) was an English chemist ( infrared spectroscopy , physical chemistry , photochemistry ). He was also an influential football official in Great Britain.

Thompson went to school in Sheffield and studied at Trinity College , Oxford as a student of Cyril Norman Hinshelwood . In 1929 he earned his bachelor's degree with top marks and went to Berlin to study with Fritz Haber , where he received his doctorate (dissertation: 1. The combustion of carbon disulfide with oxygen, 2. Investigations into explosion limits). In 1930 he returned to Oxford and became a Fellow and later Vice President of St John's College .

He dealt with the kinetics of gas reactions and molecular spectroscopy. During World War II, he worked with GBBM Sutherland at the Ministry of Aircraft Production on the infrared spectroscopic analysis of captured enemy aircraft fuel.

He was also an active footballer in the Oxford University Football Club and was Chairman of the Football Association from 1976 to 1981 . He played a major role in the sacking of England national team coach Alf Ramsey after the team failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup. In 1948 he founded the Pegasus Club (amateur footballer from Oxford and Cambridge Universities ).

In 1965 he received the Davy Medal and in 1968 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In 1946 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Foreign Secretary he was from 1965 to 1971, and in 1971 he became a Knight of the Legion of Honor . From 1963 to 1966 he was President of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) and from 1973 to 1975 of IUPAC . In 1977 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

He was editor of Spectrochimica Acta A for 20 years and Elsevier donated the Thompson Award for Essays in Molecular Spectroscopy in that journal in his honor.

Several of his students became Fellows of the Royal Society: Frederick Sydney Dainton , CF Kearton , John Wilfrid Linnett , Ian Mills , Rex Edward Richards and David H. Whiffen .

literature

  • Rex Richards, Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society, Volume 31, 1985, p. 572, first page at JSTOR

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Harold Warri Thompson at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2018th
  2. ^ Member entry of Sir Harold Thompson at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 14, 2016.
  3. ^ Thompson Award
personal data
SURNAME Thompson, Harold Warris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Wombwell , South Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1983