Papers of William Bell Thompson, physicist, researcher, professor, editor, and administrator. Thompson did pioneering work in plasma physics and established the field at Oxford University and the University of California, San Diego. He did theoretical and applied work in controlled thermonuclear research and brought several of his other interests together with research on tethers in space. The papers document Thompson's career at UCSD and include correspondence, journal articles, reports, notes, lectures, grant proposals, teaching material, and subject files.

William Bell Thompson was born February 27, 1922, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was trained at Canadian universities, receiving his B.A. in physics and mathematics in 1944 and his M.A. in physics in 1947 from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. In 1950 he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Toronto, Ontario, and went to England to take up an appointment as Senior Fellow in the Theoretical Physics Division at Harwell, the laboratory of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. When a separate facility, Culham Laboratory, was set up for fusion studies, Thompson moved there and remained until his election to the Chair of Theoretical Plasma Physics at Oxford University in 1963.

9.6 Linear feet (23 archives boxes and 2 oversize file folders)

Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.

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