Sir William Henry Thompson

Sir William Henry Thompson K.B.E. was one of the most distinguished medical doctors of his time. Born in 1860, likely at Ballinulty House, Granard. Thompson married Isabel Redfern in in Donaghdee Co. Down on the 26 July 1894. 

After schooling in the Dundalk Institution, Thompson went to Queen's College, Galway where he excelled in mathematics and medicine, graduating with 1st class honours. He taught privately and then worked as a demonstrator in anatomy in Trinity College Dublin. Post-graduate studies took him to London, Leipzig, Paris, Marburg and Heidelberg. He also went to St Petersburg, where he studied under the famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Thompson served as the first Dunville Professor of Physiology in Queen's College, Belfast, 1893-1902. From there, he went back to T.C.D. to take a professorship. He specialised in nutrition and published several papers in medical journals. He also published a translation of Pavlov's The work of the digestive glands (1904).

During the Great War, Thompson served as an advisor to the Ministry of Food. He was made a Knight Commander of the recently-founded Order of the British Empire in January 1918. His work for the ministry necessitated regular trips to London, and it was while travelling on board the R.M.S. Leinster that he died when the ship was torpedoed. He was one of 567 souls lost, six of these from Co. Longford. 

link to Civil Record of Marriage; Find A Grave entry; entry in Dictionary of Irish Biography; The London Gazette, 4 Jan 1918; Calendar of Wills, Ireland; History Ireland article on the RMS Leinster;