Gordon B. Thompson

Gordon Burnette Thompson was a British entomologist who specialised in ectoparasties, with special reference to ticks. He was born in Hampshire UK and went to college at Eltham College, S.E. London. His first post, 1930-1939, was in the Entomological Department of the British Museum (Natural History). He left this in 1939 to join the RAF Medical Service, serving in England and Canada as a Sergeant Nursing Orderly. Over the course of his career he performed research in many countries including Jamaica, Sudan, and Hawaii. Every year from 1952 to 1964 he organised an official training course in the principles and practice of crop protection for graduate students from S. and S.E. Asia, under the Colombo Plan, and in close relationship with the British Council. In that time, 175 students from 19 different countries attended this course. In 1977, he received the Queen's Jubilee Medal, for his services to the students of the Colombo Plan courses and to those others who had enjoyed and gained from his assistance during some of the most formative years of the U.K. crop protection effort. His health, which had been a slight background worry for a few years, began to deteriorate soon after he retired and he died in Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, a few days after a major operation, leaving his wife Margaret, who had helped him greatly from behind the scenes in all his many activities, and two grown-up children. *source: Obituary written by R.S. George, 1981; featured in Entomologist's Monthly Magazine 117.1 (Jan-April):87-88, complete bibliography p88-96.*