James Allan Thomson (27 July 1881 – 6 May 1928) was a New Zealand geologist, scientific administrator and museum director.
He was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1881, where his father was a science teacher at Otago Boys' High School.
[1] Selected as New Zealand's first Rhodes Scholar, Thomson studied geology, played rugby, rowed and ran at St John's College, Oxford.
[2] He was accepted as a geologist on Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica, but he developed pulmonary tuberculosis and was forced to withdraw.
[3] His father George Thomson was a New Zealand scientist, educationalist, social worker and politician.