1854. He entered parliament as member for Hull (1835–1837), and afterwards sat for Bradford (1847–1852, 1857–1859). He took a prominent part in the corn-law agitation, his Catechism of the Corn Laws (1827) being by far the most effective pamphlet published on the subject. In 1829 he became the proprietor of the Westminster Review, to which he contributed a large number of articles, republished in 1842 in six volumes, under the title Exercises, Political and Others. His mathematical publications were of a somewhat eccentric kind. He published a Theory of Parallels (1844), and was also the author of Geometry without Axioms, in which he endeavoured to “get rid” of axioms and postulates. His new Theory of Just Intonation (1850) was, however, a contribution of great value to the science of musical acoustics, and went through many editions. It may be said to have formed the basis of the tonic sol-fa system of music. He died at Blackheath, near London, on the 7th of September 1869.
See Colonel C. W. Thompson’s memoir in the Proc. Roy. Soc. (1869).
THOMPSON, WILLIAM HEPWORTH (1810–1886), English
classical scholar and master of Trinity College, Cambridge,
was born at York on the 27th of March 1810. He was privately
educated before entering the university. In 1834 he became a
fellow of Trinity, in 1853 professor of Greek (to which a canonry
in Ely Cathedral was then for the first time attached), and in
1866 master of his college. With the exception of the year 1836,
when he acted as headmaster of a newly established school in
Leicester, his life was divided between Cambridge and Ely.
He died at the master’s lodge on the 1st of October 1886.
Thompson proved a worthy successor to Whewell; the twenty
years of his mastership were years of progress, and he himself
took an active part in the abolition of tests and the reform of
university studies and of the college statutes. As a scholar he
devoted his attention almost entirely to Plato; and his Phaedrus
(1868) and Gorgias (1871), with especially valuable introductions,
still remain the standard English editions of these two dialogues.
He also edited (1856) from the author’s MSS. Lectures on the
History of Ancient Philosophy by William Archer Butler (1814–1848;
lecturer on moral philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin),
the value of which was greatly enhanced by Thompson’s notes.
See article by J. W. Clark in Dict. Nat. Biog.; and J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1908), vol. iii.
THOMSEN, GRÍMUR (1820–1896), Icelandic poet and man of letters, was born in 1820. He came in 1837 to the university of Copenhagen, where he first studied law and philology, but later, philosophy and aesthetics. He became an enthusiastic follower of the Pan-Scandinavian movement, although this was not generally favoured by his countrymen. After some years of foreign travel, in 1848 he entered the Danish diplomatic service, and remained in it till 1851, when he returned to Copenhagen, where he became the chief of one of the departments of the Danish foreign office. He retired in 1866, and then went back to Iceland, where he passed the rest of his life, active in the politics and the literature of his native island. He died in 1896. He is the best ballad poet Iceland has produced. His poems are unaffected and mostly free from rhetoric, the besetting sin of Icelandic poets. His subjects are principally taken from Icelandic or Scandinavian history and mythology. He is very unlike most of his contemporaries, both in style and thought: he is Icelandic to the core, and on that account is perhaps the modern Icelandic poet most appreciated by foreigners Besides his poems (two separate collections, Reykjavík, 1880, and Copenhagen, 1895), he is the author of numerous critical and historical essays in Icelandic and Danish, and some larger works in Danish, of which his dissertation on Lord Byron (Copenhagen, 1845) deserves to be mentioned. Grímur Thomsen was a warm admirer of Greek literature, and translated a great number of poems from that language into Icelandic. (S. Bl.)
THOMSEN, HANS PETER JÖRGEN JULIUS (1826–1909),
Danish chemist, was born in Copenhagen on the 16th of February
1826, and spent his life in that city. From 1847 to 1856 he
was engaged in teaching chemistry at the Polytechnic, of which
from 1883 to 1892 he acted as director, and from 1856 to 1866
he was on the staff of the military high school. In 1866 he was
appointed professor of chemistry at the university, and retained
that chair until his retirement from active work in 1891. His
name is famous for his researches in thermochemistry, and,
especially between 1869 and 1882, he carried out a great number
of determinations of the heat evolved or absorbed in chemical
reactions, such as the formation of salts, oxidation and reduction,
and the combustion of organic compounds. His collected
results were published in 1882–1886 in four volumes under the
title Thermochemische Untersuchungen, and also a résumé in
English under the title Thermochemistry in 1908. In 1857 he
established in Copenhagen a process for manufacturing soda
from cryolite, obtained from the west coast of Greenland. He
died on the 13th of February 1909. His brother, Carl August
Thomsen (1834–1894), was lecturer on technical chemistry at
the Copenhagen Polytechnic, and a second brother, Thomas
Gottfried Thomsen (1841–1901), was assistant in the chemical
laboratory at the university till 1884, when he abandoned science
for theology, subsequently becoming minister at Norup and
Randers.
THOMSON, SIR CHARLES WYVILLE (1830–1882), Scottish naturalist, was born at Bonsyde, Linlithgowshire, on the 5th of March 1839, and was educated at Edinburgh University. In 1850 he was appointed lecturer in, and in 1851 professor of, botany at Aberdeen, and in 1853 he became professor of natural history in Qneen’s College, Cork. A year later he was nominated to the chair of mineralogy and geology at Queen’s College, Belfast, and in 1860 was transferred to the chair of natural history in the same institution. In 1868 he assumed the duties of professor of botany at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, and finally in 1870 he received the natural history chair at Edinburgh. He will be specially remembered as a student of the biological conditions of the depths of the sea. Being interested in crinoids, and stimulated by the results of the dredging of Michael Sars (1805–1869) in the deep sea off the Norwegian coasts, he succeeded, along with Dr W. B. Carpenter, in obtaining the loan of H.M.S. “Lightning” and “ Porcupine,” for successive deep-sea dredging expeditions in the summers of 1868 and 1869. It was thus shown that animal life exists in abundance down to depths of 650 fathoms, that all invertebrate groups are represented (largely by Tertiary forms previously believed to be extinct), and, moreover, that deep-sea temperatures are by no means so constant as was supposed, but vary considerably, and indicate an oceanic circulation. The results of these expeditions were described in The Depths of the Sea, which he published in 1873. The remarkable results gained for hydrography as well as zoology, in association with the practical needs of ocean telegraphy, soon led to the granting of H.M.S. “Challenger” for a circumnavigating expedition, and Thomson sailed at the end of 1872 as director of the scientific staff, the cruise lasting three years and a half (see “Challenger” Expedition). On his return he received many academic honours, and was knighted. In 1877 he published two volumes (The Voyage of the Challenger in the Atlantic), of a preliminary account of the results of the voyage, meanwhile carrying on his administrative labours in connexion with the disposition of the special collections and the publication of the monographs dealing with them. His health, never robust, was meanwhile giving way; from 1879 he ceased to perform the duties of his chair, and he died at Bonsyde on the 10th of March 1882.
See obituary notice in Proc. Soc. Edin. (1883); also Thomson and Murray, Reports of the Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger” (Edinburgh, 1885).
THOMSON, JAMES (1700–1748), English poet, author of The Seasons, was born at Ednam, in Roxburghshire, on the 11th of September 1700—the third son and fourth child of Thomas Thomson, minister of that place. His mother, Beatrix, was the daughter of Mr Trotter of Fogo, whose wife, Margaret, was one of the Homes of Bassenden. About 1701 Thomas Thomson removed to Southdean near Jedburgh. Here James was educated at first by Robert Riccaltoun, to whose verses on
