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 Thompson Papers, circa 1930-1995 (bulk 1965-1990) (MSS 410)
Extent: 9.6 Linear feet (23 archives boxes and 2 oversize file folders)
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.
Thompson first came to the University of California, San Diego, in 1961 as a visiting professor from Culham. In 1965 he was invited to join the new San Diego campus as a founding member of the Physics Department. He spent the next twenty-five years at UCSD, combining research, supervision of doctoral research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities; he was chairman of the department from 1969 to 1972. He retired in 1990.
Thompson's career focused on the development of the theory of plasma physics and its applications in controlled thermonuclear research. He worked in the areas of magnetic fusion, magnetohydrodynamics, the calculation of transport coefficients, heating, instabilities, diffusion, relativistic kinetic theory, counterstreaming plasmas, resonances, toroidal systems and guiding center plasmas in two dimensions. He was also interested in other fields: terrestrial magnetism, planetary dynamics, antimatter, space science, and oceanography. He combined many of these areas in research projects on tethers.
Thompson extended his commitment to teaching beyond his physics laboratories and classrooms. He gave talks and lectures to a range of audiences, participated in interdisciplinary seminars for undergraduates and wrote review articles for his colleagues in other areas of physics.
William B. Thompson died in 1995.
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. The collection provides a representative selection of his work in physics as researcher, teacher, editor, and administrator, principally during his twenty-five years (1965-1990) with the UCSD Physics Department.
Arranged in eight series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) WRITINGS, 4) LECTURES AND TALKS, 5) CONTRACTS, GRANTS AND PROPOSALS, 6) TEACHING MATERIAL, 7) SUBJECT FILES, and 8) FRAGMENTS AND UNIDENTIFIED MATERIAL.
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