[1] Thompson studied geology at Dartmouth College, graduating with an AB in 1942.
From 1942 to 1946, he worked in the United States Army Air Forces as a weather forecaster.
[2] Thompson was hired at Harvard University as an instructor in petrology in 1949 as a successor of Esper Signius Larsen.
He was promoted to assistant professor in the following year to full professorship in 1960.
Thompson was named Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard in 1977.