Thomson, Sir John Arthur, 1861–1933, Scottish naturalist and writer. From 1899 to 1930 he was Regius professor of natural history at the Univ. of Aberdeen. In 1924 he lectured at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and at Yale. He was knighted in 1930. He wrote about zoology, concentrating on the alcyonarians (subclass of marine coelenterates, including the soft corals), but he is especially remembered for his many popular works on science and on the reconciliation of science and religion. His works, scholarly in content and of good literary style, include What Is Man? (1923), Science and Religion (1925), and Modern Science (1929). He edited The Outline of Science (4 vol., 1922; repr. 1937).
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