Thomson was born in Cockenzie, Scotland, in 1913 but immigrated to France and then to the United States while still a child. He graduated from Columbia University in 1935, where he majored in botany and zoology, and earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and 1939, respectively. He studied the ecology of prairie plants in central Wisconsin for his dissertation. As a graduate student in botany, in the company of dedicated professors, particularly Norman C. Fassett, his major professor, and ecologists and environmentalists John T. Curtis and Aldo Leopold, Thomson's affinity for the life of a scientist was only reinforced. Conscientious, careful, and organized, it seemed natural he would be drawn to ecologicaland taxonomic studies. After finishing graduate school, he worked in New York as a naturalist at the American Museum of Natural History and taught at Brooklyn College before returning to Wisconsin to take a position at Superior State Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin-Superior) in 1942, where he served for two years before joining the faculty of the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1944. He retired in 1984 but continued to come to school and work almost dailyuntil about 2001.
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