Portrait of George Paget Thomson

Birthday profile

George Paget Thomson

George Paget Thomson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1975)

Born
May 3, 1892
Died
September 10, 1975
Zodiac sign
Taurus
Birth year
1892

About George Paget Thomson

Sir George Paget Thomson 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". 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. In 1937, Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in discovering the wave-like properties of matter.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when George Paget Thomson was born

George Paget Thomson was born in 1892. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst heavyweight boxing title under Queensberry rules
  • Top headlineEllis Island immigration station opens
  • Technology milestoneDiesel engine patented by Rudolf Diesel
  • World population~1.52B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderBenjamin Harrison
  • U.S. population65.0M

1892 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in George Paget Thomson's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18922026
Population65.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.