Thomson

Thomson is a surname of Scottish origin. It is a patronymic form meaning “son of Thomas,” and it is one of several spellings of the name derived from the given name Thomas. Variants include Thompson and Tomson, with Thomson being particularly common in Scotland and parts of northern England. The name has been adopted by various families and, through migration, appears in many English-speaking countries.

Notable people named Thomson include Joseph John Thomson, a British physicist who discovered the electron and determined its charge-to-mass ratio, earning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin, was a Scottish physicist and engineer known for formulating the Kelvin temperature scale and contributing to thermodynamics and electrical theory. George Paget Thomson was a British physicist who conducted experiments demonstrating electron diffraction, providing important evidence for the wave nature of matter. Thomas Thomson, a Scottish chemist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, contributed to the development of early chemical theory and nomenclature.

In addition to people, the name Thomson appears in corporate and geographic contexts. The multinational information company Thomson Reuters (formed in 2008 by the merger of Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group) is a prominent use of the name in business and media. The surname also appears in place names, institutions, and historical references across the English-speaking world.